THE  LIBRARY 

OF 
THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

OR 

THE  OLD  GOSPEL  AND  MODERN  FARMING 
IN  ANCIENT  INDIA 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NKW  YORK    •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Lmnro 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 
TORONTO 


THE 
GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

OR 

THE  OLD  GOSPEL  AND  MODERN  FARMING 
IN  ANCIENT  INDIA 


BY 
SAM  HIGGINBOTTOM,  M.A. 

B.Sc.  IN  AGRICULTURE 


AW  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT.  1921. 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  AprU,  1921 


FEINTED    IN   THB    U.   8.   A. 


0 


TO 

THE  ONE  WITHOUT  WHOSE  UNFAILING  COUR- 
AGE. GOOD-TEMPER.  FAITH  IN  GOD  AND  IN  ME, 
THIS  BOOK  COULD  NEVER  HAVE  BEEN  WRIT- 
TEN; TO  THE  HELP-MEET  AND  PARTNER  IN 
ALL  THE  STRUGGLES  REPRESENTED  HEREIN 

MY  WIFE 


PREFACE 

This  book  is  written  at  the  request  of  the  publishers 
who  asked  me  to  put  into  book  form  some  lectures  de- 
livered at  Princeton  Theological  Seminary.  There  is 
more  in  the  book  than  the  lectures.  I  feel  that  so  lit- 
tle has  been  accomplished  in  India  of  all  I  set  out  to 
do,  that  this  book  is  little  more  than  a  report  of  prog- 
ress. There  is  a  growing  interest  in  the  non-theologi- 
cal aspects  of  Foreign  Missions  and  this  production 
may  serve  some  purpose  in  drawing  attention  to  the 
need  for  other  than  the  ordained  missionary  to  help 
the  backward  peoples  of  the  far  countries.  Those  who 
are  intimately  acquainted  with  my  work  in  India 
may  feel  that  I  have  ignored  altogether  or  slurred  over 
some  of  the  greatest  difficulties  to  be  faced  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  such  an  institution  as  is  contemplated  at 
Allahabad. 

It  is  said  that  I  speak  only  of  the  high  spots,  tell  only 
of  the  successes,  write  as  though  there  were  no  humiliat- 
ing failures  to  record.  This  is  largely  true.  But  any 
one  familiar  with  the  practical  conduct  of  affairs  knows 
that  there  are  difficulties  and  lions  in  the  way,  that  there 
is  friction  and  clash  of  will,  that  there  are  sharp  differ- 
ences of  opinion  before  any  worthwhile  program  is  car- 
ried out.  So  much  so  has  this  been  my  experience  that 
I  have  come  to  see  that  the  only  place  on  earth  where 
men  are  gathered  together  without  friction  is  the  ceme- 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

tery.  It  is  not  altogether  loss  to  be  blind  to  some  of  the 
"insoluble  problems."  I  have  found  that  some  of  these 
with  infinite  patience,  no  bitterness  of  spirit  or  of  jeal- 
ousy, led  by  His  spirit,  can  be  made  most  useful.  We 
are  told  that  the  mountains  shall  be  a  way,  the  seeming 
barriers  shall  be  the  paths  to  progress,  so  that  I  do  not 
despair  of  seeing  not  only  a  new  heaven,  but  also  a  new 
earth,  wherein  dwelleth.  righteousness.  Therefore  in 
hope  and  great  expectancy  I  daily  pray  and  work  that 
His  Kingdom  may  come  here  and  now. 

SAM  HIGGINBOTTOM. 

Radnor  Road 

Cleveland  Heights,  Ohio. 
Dec.  27,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  INTRODUCTION  TO  MISSION  WORK  IN  INDIA    .  3 

II  INDIA'S  POVERTY  AND   ILLITERACY     ...  13 

III  CASTE,  A  LIMITING  FACTOR     .     .     *     .     .  23 

IV  MISSION  INDUSTRIES     .       .     ...     .     .  34 

V    How  THE  FARM  STARTED 52 

VI  THE  CATTLE  PROBLEM  OF  INDIA    ...     .     69 

VII  THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA     .     .     78 

VIII  WORK  IN  NATIVE  STATES 95 

IX  THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION     ....  106 

X  JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK  .  124 


"And  thine  ears  shall  hear  a  word  behind  thee  saying,  This 
is  the  way,  walk  ye  in  it,  when  ye  turn  to  the  right  hand,  and 
when  ye  turn  to  the  left."  Isaiah  30 :  21. 

"Neither  are  your  ways  my  ways,  saith  the  Lord.  For  as  the 
heavens  are  higher  than  the  earth,  so  are  my  ways  higher 
than  your  ways."  Isaiah  55 :  8-9. 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION   TO   MISSION   WORK  IN  INDIA 

In  the  month  of  February,  1903,  while  I  was  still  an 
undergraduate  in  Princeton  University,  I  was  invited 
by  an  old  school  friend,  Mr.  W.  W.  Fry,  then  Secretary 
of  the  Trenton  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  to  spend  Sunday  with  him. 
I  accepted  his  invitation,  and  accompanied  him  to  the 
men's  meeting  on  Sunday  afternoon.  When  the  meet- 
ing was  over  he  introduced  me  to  a  missionary  from 
India,  the  Rev.  Henry  Forman.  On  the  following  morn- 
ing in  the  street  car  on  which  I  rode  back  to  College, 
the  only  vacant  seat  was  beside  the  missionary  to  whom 
I  had  been  introduced  the  day  before,  and  whom  I  had 
never  expected  to  see  again.  As  soon  as  I  had  taken 
my  seat  he  began  to  ask  all  manner  of  questions. 

"What  year  are  you  in  college?" 

"This  is  my  last,"  I  answered. 

"What  next?" 

"A  theological  seminary." 

"Then  what?" 

"The  foreign  mission  field,  I  hope.*' 

"Where  do  you  want  to  go?" 


4  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

"Either  to  China  or  to  South  America." 

"What  do  you  think  of  India?" 

"Not  much." 

"Why  not?" 

"Because  the  missionaries  from  India  whom  I  have 
heard,  all  speak  of  the  intellectual  keenness  and  the 
nimble-mindedness  of  the  Indian.  I  do  not  feel  able 
to  cope  with  that  kind." 

He  then  told  me  of  the  mass  movement  among  the 
outcastes  in  which  thousands  of  the  lowest  classes  of 
India  were  turning  to  Christ.  He  suggested  that,  if  I 
were  willing  and  anxious  for  work,  I  should  go  out 
immediately  after  my  course  was  finished  at  college  to 
work  among  these  poor  illiterate  folk.  He  also  sug- 
gested that  this  would  not  be  the  kind  of  work  which 
would  overtax  my  mentality.  In  view  of  my  age  he 
thought  that  the  Board  might  be  willing  to  send  me 
out.  I  could  still  take  my  theological  course  in  India 
and  be  ordained  later  on.  Then  he  put  to  me  the 
direct  question. 

"If  the  Presbyterian  Board  would  send  you  imme- 
diately upon  graduation  from  college  would  you  go 
out  to  India  to  do  evangelistic  work  among  the  low- 
caste  people?"  I  could,  at  the  moment,  think  of  no 
good  reason  against  such  a  proposal,  so,  hesitatingly, 
replied  that,  although  there  was  little  hope  of  the  Board 
sending  me  out  as  an  unordained  man  for  evangelistic 
work,  yet  I  was  ready  to  go. 

"All  right,"  he  said.  "Before  you  attend  any  lec- 
tures to-day  write  to  Robert  Speer  and  tell  him  of  our 
conversation.  I  will  also  write.  Good-by,  I  get  off 
here."  We  had  reached  Lawrenceville  which  lies  about 
half  way  between  Trenton  and  Princeton.  I  had  the 


INTRODUCTION  TO  MISSION  WORK          5 

rest  of  the  journey  in  which  to  ride  alone  and  think  of 
what  I  had  done.  I  prayed.  When  I  reached  my  room, 
I  wrote  to  Mr.  Robert  E.  Speer.  In  April  I  was  com- 
missioned to  go  out  unordained,  to  carry  on  evangelistic 
work  among  the  low-caste  people  of  North  India.  In 
New  York  City  I  was  appointed  to  Etah,  in  the  United 
Provinces  of  Agra  and  Oudh,  India.  I  was  graduated 
in  June  and  started  for  India. 

On  Nov.  10,  1903,  I  arrived  in  Calcutta.  I  went 
northwest,  five  hundred  and  fourteen  miles,  to  Allahabad, 
the  nearest  station  at  which  the  American  Presbyterians 
were  at  work.  After  spending  a  few  happy  days  as  the 
guest  of  the  late  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Arthur  H.  Ewing,  I  ac- 
companied them  to  Ludhiana  in  the  Punjab,  where  the 
Presbyterian  synod  was  to  meet.  At  the  same  time  the 
Punjab  and  North  India  missions  were  to  hold  their 
annual  meetings.  Here  I  received  a  most  cordial  and 
hearty  welcome  from  all  the  missionaries.  I  sat  in  the 
meetings  and  saw  how  the  business  of  the  mission  was 
conducted.  I  noticed  how  much  trouble  was  caused  by 
the  refusal  of  a  certain  missionary  to  accept  the  work 
which  the  missionary  body  assigned  to  him.  I  decided 
that  I  would  never  be  so  stubborn.  I  had  little  idea  how 
soon  and  how  keenly  my  decision  would  be  put  to  the 
test.  When  the  vacancies  were  considered,  there  were 
not  nearly  enough  missionaries  to  go  round.  When 
my  own  turn  came  they  surprised  me  by  saying: — 
"We  have  decided  that  you  are  to  teach  in  the  college 
at  Allahabad."  I  objected.  "I  had  come  out,"  I  said, 
"to  do  evangelistic  work.  I  did  not  like  the  idea  of 
teaching,  I  was  not  fitted  for  it."  It  was  pointed  out 
that  in  the  contract  signed  in  New  York  I  had  agreed 
to  abide  by  the  will  of  a  majority  of  the  mission.  The 


6  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

majority  had  voted  that  I  was  to  go  to  the  college 
at  Allahabad.  "All  right,"  I  said.  "I  am  not  willing 
to  break  my  contract.  I  will  do  the  best  I  can.  I  go 
under  protest,  and  I  do  not  hold  myself  responsible  for 
results. ' ' 

The  more  one  studies  the  organization  of  a  mission 
and  the  various  ways  and  means  which  it  employs  in 
order  to  make  Christ  and  His  Good  News  known,  the 
more  one  will  find  that  it  is  the  spirit  and  attitude  of 
the  individual  missionary  which  matters  rather  than 
the  particular  work  to  which  he  is  assigned.  If  one 
has  the  right  attitude  of  mind  and  a  broad  and  liberal 
education,  then  whatever  the  duty  assigned,  one  will 
find  a  way  of  using  his  work  to  further  the  great  end 
in  view.  For  the  individual  who  has  once  seen  the 
vision  of  what  the  world  might  be  if  it  had  Jesus  as 
Lord  and  Master,  and  who  has  consecrated  himself  to 
the  will  of  God  and  to  his  fellow  men  in  obedience  to 
Jesus'  "Go  ye  into  all  the  world,"  it  is  not  possible  to 
conceive  of  any  position  in  mission  work  in  India  which 
will  not  call  out  all  the  energy,  power,  initiative  of 
which  that  individual  is  possessed.  It  is  the  fault  of 
the  missionary  if  he,  or  she,  does  not  go  tired  to  bed 
every  night  from  a  day  well  spent  in  the  service  of  the 
Master.  The  mission  merely  assigns  the  new  arrival  to 
a  station,  it  cannot  give  to  him  either  the  spirit  or  the 
personality  with  which  to  work  out  his  faith.  The  in- 
dividual has  invariably  to  make  his  own  way  of  present- 
ing Christ.  Whatever  his  appointment  he  has  to  deter- 
mine for  himself  the  best  way  of  carrying  his  principles 
into  practice.  One  of  the  joys  of  mission  service  is 
that  the  individual  missionary  has  such  a  free  hand,  and 
is  so  much  the  master  of  his  own  work.  During  his  first 


INTRODUCTION  TO  MISSION  WORK          7 

years  he  serves  an  apprenticeship  in  a  very  sympathetic 
company.  The  older  missionaries  are  eager  that  the 
newcomer  should  find  that  work  in  which  he  can  work 
with  the  least  friction,  and  the  work  into  which  he  can 
put  all  his  heart  and  enthusiasm.  The  field  is  so  great 
and  the  task  is  so  complex  and  manysided  that  the  mis- 
sionary can  use  his  own  particular  talent  to  gain  other 
talents.  No  one  method  will  meet  all  cases.  Therefore 
each  missionary,  as  he  keeps  in  mind  his  purpose,  can 
work  out  his  life,  according  to  his  aptitudes  and  fitness, 
to  hasten  the  coming  of  that  Kingdom  for  which  we 
daily  pray. 

The  scarcity  of  missionaries  was  such  that  the  Mis- 
sion College  at  Allahabad  was  unable  to  ask  what  the 
teacher  was  best  fitted  to  teach.  It  knew  where  its 
greatest  need  lay  and  simply  told  the  teacher  to  fill  it 
as  best  he  could.  The  subjects  upon  which  I  was  best 
prepared  were  already  well  cared  for.  I  was  assigned 
to  a  subject  which  I  had  taken  at  college  simply  for  the 
reason  that  it  was  required. — They  told  me  that  I  was 
to  teach  Economics. 

The  text  books  were  English  and  American,  the  stu- 
dents were  Indian  and  were  forced  to  do  their  studying 
in  a  foreign  language.  Let  an  American  undergraduate 
whose  mother  tongue  is  English,  be  required  to  do  all 
his  college  work  in  a  modern  language,  for  example 
French,  and  he  will  then  understand  the  hard  task  set 
the  Indian  student.  Yet  such  is  the  curious  situation  in 
India  that  English  is  the  language  of  the  educated.  It 
is  the  one  language  that  will  take  one  all  over  India. 
There  is  no  one  Indian  language  that  will  do  this,  al- 
though there  are  over  one  hundred  different  Indian  lan- 
guages spoken  and  written  in  India  to-day.  The  English 


8  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

language,  while  having  certain  obvious  disadvantages, 
has  been  a  great  blessing  to  India.  Prom  the  English 
classics  the  Indian  student  has  mastered  some  great 
world  ideas  that  were  dimly  stated,  or  not  stated  at  all, 
in  oriental  literature.  These  ideas  are  now  bearing  fruit. 
The  great  fact  of  the  growth  of  a  feeling  of  nationalism 
in  India;  the  idea  of  democracy,  the  idea  of  human  lib- 
erty, learned  from  Milton  and  the  other  English  writers, 
are  necessary  antecedents  of  the  idea  of  responsible  gov- 
ernment in  India  which  will  be  a  government  in  which 
the  majority  elected  will  be  Indians.  English  has  been  a 
hard  schoolmaster,  but  it  has  been  a  thorough  one,  and 
its  teachings  are  now  part  of  the  warp  and  woof  of 
the  thinking  of  educated  India.  Nothing  else  could  so 
surely  and  so  quickly  have  made  it  possible  for  India 
to  consider  itself  one  people. 

When  these  students  found  that  their  teacher  knew 
so  little  about  his  subject,  they  were  afraid  that  they 
would  fail  in  their  Government  examinations.  Up  to 
this  time  the  Indian  University  has  been  an  examining 
body,  not  a  teaching  university,  and  no  separate  college 
can  examine  its  own  students  or  grant  degrees.  It  was 
difficult  to  find  Indian  illustrations  that  the  students 
could  understand,  for  the  various  economic  principles 
laid  down  in  the  text  books.  Granted  the  soundness  of 
the  principles,  it  was  essential  to  obtain  illustrations 
and  concrete  examples  out  of  the  Indian  conditions  which 
they  knew.  With  this  end  in  view  we  began  to  take 
advantage  of  the  Indian  holiday  system,  which  perhaps 
needs  a  word  of  explanation.  India  possesses  the  larg- 
est Mohammedan  population  of  any  country  in  the 
world.  It  is  greater  than  that  of  Egypt,  Turkey,  Persia, 
and  Arabia  put  together  and  amounts  to  over  seventy 


INTRODUCTION  TO  MISSION  WORK  9 

millions.  When  an  Indian  college  admits  Mohammedan 
students  it  is  compelled  to  allow  them  to  observe  their 
own  religious  holidays  and  festivals.  Again,  India  is 
the  only  country  which  has  any  very  considerable  Hindu 
population.  At  the  last  census  this  population  numbered 
over  two  hundred  and  twenty  millions,  more  in  fact 
than  the  total  of  all  the  Protestant  Christians  in  the 
world  to-day.  The  Hindu  students  must  also  be  free  to 
observe  their  religious  holidays.  With  the  different 
Christian  holidays  added,  including  Sunday  of  course, 
the  college  term  is  somewhat  broken  up,  and  the  Indian 
student,  being  in  most  things  not  unlike  his  fellow 
students  the  world  over,  takes  full  advantage  of  every 
holiday.  I  often  recall  a  remark  of  President  W.  O. 
Thompson  of  Ohio  State  University,  that  education  is 
the  one  commodity  sold  in  America  for  which  the  pur- 
chaser is  glad  to  receive  less  than  he  has  paid  for. 
The  greater  the  number  of  holidays,  the  better  the 
student  likes  it. 

Realizing  the  difficulties  which  I  have  mentioned,  of 
studying  in  a  foreign  language,  and  having  an  inexperi- 
enced teacher,  the  students  agreed  to  give  up  some  of 
these  numerous  holidays,  in  order  that  we  might  take 
trips  together  to  study  economic  conditions  in  the  neigh- 
borhood. Together  we  visited  the  workshops  of  the 
East  India  Railway  and  realized  how  human  labor  had 
been  reduced  to  a  minimum  through  the  use  of  power, 
how  the  inventive  genius  of  man  is  multiplying  his  own 
capacity  and  at  the  same  time  ridding  human  labor  of 
its  most  forbidding  drudgery.  When  they  saw  a  pair 
of  locomotive  driving  wheels  on  a  lathe  in  a  room  where 
hardly  a  sound  could  be  heard,  they  stood  amazed  at 
the  exhibition  of  such  tremendous  power  applied  in 


10  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

quietness.     In  the  brick  kilns  we  watched  production  on 
a  large  scale  and  the  specialization  of  process. 

We  crossed  the  Jumna  river  in  order  to  visit  the  Naini 
Central  Jail  which  has  accommodation  for  three  thou- 
sand prisoners.  For  sixteen  years  the  Superintendant 
of  this  jail  was  the  late  Colonel  E.  Hudson,  I.M.S.,  a 
British  Military  Medical  officer.  Colonel  Hudson  was  a 
genius.  He  tried  to  manage  the  jail  so  that  no  man  who 
entered  should  return  to  his  ordinary  life  without  having 
learned  something  which  would  be  of  advantage  to  him 
if  he  wished  to  become  a  decent  citizen.  The  gardens 
and  the  field  crops  were  the  best  I  have  ever  seen.  His 
field  cabbages,  crop  after  crop,  weighed  from  forty  to 
sixty  pounds  each.  His  cauliflowers,  stripped  of  all 
leaves  and  stalk,  till  only  the  beautiful  snowy,  white 
head  remained,  turned  the  scale  at  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
pounds.  His  silage  crops  of  sorghum  or  millet  grew  to  a 
height  of  from  seventeen  to  eighteen  feet,  and  weighed 
twenty-five  to  thirty  tons  of  green  fodder  to  the  acre. 
Dean  Alfred  Vivian  of  the  College  of  Agriculture,  Ohio 
State  University,  Columbus,  Ohio,  on  his  journey  round 
the  world,  rated  the  jail  silage  A  No.  1.  Colonel  Hud- 
son invented  a  coal-burning  stove  for  cooking  the  thin, 
flat,  unleavened  cakes  of  India,  known  as  chappatties. 
This  stove  saved  the  jail  twenty  thousand  rupees  a  year 
in  fuel  and  the  daily  labor  of  fifty  cooks.  In  the  days 
when  the  kitchens  had  been  dependent  upon  wood  for 
fuel,  it  had  been  almost  impossible  to  obtain  dry  wood 
in  the  rainy  season  with  which  to  cook  the  food.  As  a 
result  of  damp  wood  and  improperly  cooked  food,  an 
outbreak  of  cholera  and  dysentery  had  accompanied 
the  annual  rainy  season.  This  coal  stove  alone  had  been 
the  means  of  saving  the  lives  of  hundreds  of  prisoners. 


INTRODUCTION  TO  MISSION  WORK        11 

There  were  machine  shops,  carpentering  and  woodcarv- 
ing  shops,  and  a  pottery  department;  there  were  weav- 
ing sheds  where  the  prisoners  worked  upon  the  most 
up-to-date  hand-looms,  making  their  own  blankets  and 
clothing;  there  was  a  rug  factory,  a  roofing-tile  factory 
and  modern  dairy  which  provided  milk  for  the  sick 
prisoners  and  jail  staff.  Various  experiments  had  been 
carried  on  with  underground  silos  and  I  have  never  seen 
cattle  in  better  condition  than  those  at  the  Naini  jail  fed 
on  this  silage.  Colonel  Hudson  had  learned  how  to  ap- 
peal to  the  criminal  mind  and  also  how  to  get  the  best 
out  of  it.  In  every  case  he  tried  to  send  the  man  out  a 
better  man  than  when  he  came  in.  In  his  gardens  and 
on  his  farm  he  had  learned  how  best  to  turn  the  waste 
products  from  the  jail  into  abundant  health-producing 
food  for  man  and  beast.  This  was  on  land  that  had  been 
considered  sterile  and  unproductive  when  turned  over 
to  him.  It  did  not  take  many  visits  to  convince  both  the 
students  and  myself  that  if  only  Colonel  Hudson's 
methods  for  the  utilization  of  wastes  could  be  copied  all 
over  India,  more  could  be  done  with  these  than  with 
any  other  single  factor  to  rid  India  of  the  terrible  fam- 
ines which  attack  her  periodically.  The  proper  disposal 
of  the  refuse  would  give  the  people  enough  to  eat  and 
would  provide  a  sanitary  system  which  would  greatly 
improve  the  general  health.  The  organization  of  the 
jail  was  so  nearly  perfect,  the  efficiency  so  remarkable 
and  the  cleanliness  so  evident  that  the  jail  was  a  favorite 
visiting  place  for  us  and  we  never  came  away  without 
feeling  that  the  visit  had  been  worth  while.  In  Colonel 
Hudson  we  saw  the  type  of  public  servant,  quiet,  alert, 
diligent,  sympathetic,  efficient,  never  looking  for  reward 
other  than  his  regular  pay,  rejoicing  in  doing  his  duty 


12  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

well,  that  has  made  Britain  the  most  successful  of  the 
colonizing  nations  of  history. 


"When  thou  goest  out  to  battle  against  thine  enemies,  and 
seest  horses,  and  chariots,  and  a  people  more  than  thou,  be 
not  afraid  of  them:  for  the  Lord  thy  God  is  with  thee,  which 
brought  thee  up  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt.  And  it  shall  be, 
when  ye  are  come  nigh  unto  the  battle,  that  the  priest  shall 
approach  and  speak  unto  the  people,  And  shall  say  unto 
them,  Hear,  O  Israel,  ye  approach  this  day  unto  battle  against 
your  enemies:  let  not  your  hearts  faint,  fear  not,  and  do  not 
tremble  neither  be  ye  terrified  because  of  them;  For  the  Lord 
your  God  is  he  that  goeth  with  you,  to  fight  for  you  against 
your  enemies,  to  save  you.  And  the  officers  shall  speak  unto 
the  people,  saying,  What  man  is  there  that  hath  built  a  new 
house,  and  hath  not  dedicated  it?  let  him  go  and  return  to 
his  house,  lest  he  die  in  the  battle,  and  another  man  dedicate 
it.  And  what  man  is  he  that  hath  planted  a  vineyard,  and 
hath  not  yet  eaten  of  it?  let  him  also  go  and  return  unto  his 
house,  lest  he  die  in  the  battle,  and  another  man  eat  of  it. 
And  what  man  is  there  that  hath  betrothed  a  wife,  and  hath 
not  taken  her?  let  him  go  and  return  unto  his  house,  lest  he 
die  in  the  battle,  and  another  man  take  her.  And  the  officers 
shall  speak  further  unto  the  people,  and  they  shall  say,  What 
man  is  there  that  is  fearful  and  fainthearted?  let  him  go 
and  return  unto  the  house,  lest  his  brethren's  heart  faint  as 
well  as  his  heart."  Deut.  20 : 1-8. 


CHAPTER  H 

INDIA'S  POVERTY  AND  ILLITERACY 

India  is  a  land  of  villages,  700,000  of  them.  Her 
population  is  rural, — over  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  people 
living  in  small  villages.  We  went  into  some  neighboring 
villages  in  order  to  study  the  life  of  the  Indian  farmer. 
In  the  United  Provinces  the  Indian  farmer  seldom  has 
his  home  on  his  own  farm  land.  The  average  holding  of 
the  tenant  there  is  three  and  one  half  acres.  The  aver- 
age farm  of  a  land-owner  is  only  four  and  one  half  acres. 
These  small  fa.rms  are  usually  scattered  and  "frag- 
mented" into  a  number  of  small  plots,  very  often  dis- 
tributed within  a  radius  of  a  mile  or  so  round  the  village. 
Because  of  these  small  scattered  holdings  the  farmers 
usually  live  in  the  villages,  securing  protection  against 
wild  animals  and  wandering  bands  of  criminals.  The 
ordinary  house  has  walls  of  solid  mud,  one  story  high 
and  no  cellar.  The  roof  is  a  bamboo  frame  work  over 
which  is  laid  straw  thatch  or  tiles  about  the  size  of  a 
man's  hand.  The  reason  for  the  small  sized  tile  is  that 
it  is  hand  molded  and  baked  with  cowdung  for  fuel  which 
does  not  give  enough  heat  to  bake  a  large  tile.  There  is 
generally  not  more  than  one  room  and  one  door.  A 
verandah,  six  to  ten  feet  wide,  serves  as  shelter  for  the 
bullocks  and  the  cow.  Such  a  house  costs  from  fifteen 
to  fifty  dollars  to  build.  From  our  conversation  with 

13 


14  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

these  villagers  we  learned  that  they  had  little  capital, 
very  little  equipment,  and  entirely  insufficient  food  and 
clothing.  Their  capital  generally  consisted  of: 

One  pair  of  work  oxen,  each $10.00  to  $15.00 

A  wooden  plow   .65 

A  sickle  for  reaping  grain .30 

A  native  spade  for  digging .60 

A  grass  cutting  tool .20 

A  wooden  fork .20 

A  thick  heavy  club  for  breaking  clods .15 

A  flat  board  for  leveling  ground .50 

A  few  old  Standard  Oil  tins 50 

A  big  leather  bag,  maintenance  per  year   

A  long  rope    6.00 

A  pulley  wheel 1 .00 


$25.10 

This  list  usually  represents  the  number  of  their  agri- 
cultural implements.  The  plow  is  a  wooden  one  with 
a  small  iron  tip  or  bar,  keel  shaped  like  a  boat.  It  does 
not  turn  a  furrow,  but  makes  a  small  V  shaped  scratch 
throwing  the  dirt  on  each  side.  This  scratch  is  so  nar- 
row that  to  plow  an  acre  means  going  over  the  ground  at 
least  three  times ;  the  distance  walked  is  over  fifty  miles. 
A  small,  improved  plow  that  turns  a  furrow  will  do  a 
better  job  and  go  only  sixteen  miles  to  plow  the  acre. 
The  ordinary  Indian  plow  has  only  one  handle  so  the 
plowman  is  near  enough  to  twist  the  tails  of  his  oxen. 
Seeing  this  plow  one  understands  why  Jesus  said,  "  No 
man,  having  put  his  hand  to  the  plow,  and  looking  back 
is  fit  for  the  Kingdom  of  GTod. ' '  If  the  Indian  plowman 
looks  back  the  plow  will  not  stay  in  the  furrow,  but 
rides  out,  and  fails  to  accomplish  the  purpose  for  which 
it  was  made.  And  that  is  the  point  of  Jesus'  remark. 
The  man  who  looks  back  fails  to  accomplish  what  he 


INDIA'S  POVERTY  AND  ILLITERACY       15 

should.  The  Indian  spade  or  "pharwa"  is  shaped  like 
a  large  hoe  with  a  short  handle.  It  takes  less  muscular 
effort  and  accomplishes  less  work  than  an  American 
spade  or  shovel.  But  when  we  see  how  hard  Indian  soil 
can  bake  and  consider  the  fact  that  so  few  Indian  farm- 
ers wear  shoes,  we  realize  that  the  Indian  type  is  better 
suited  to  Indian  conditions  for  digging  than  the  Ameri- 
can. When  it  comes  to  shovelling  sand,  lime,  coal  or 
dirt  it  is  not  nearly  so  efficient  as  the  American  type. 
Wherever  an  American  shovel  is  used  in  India  it  is  a 
two-man  job ;  one  man  pushes  and  steers  the  shovel,  an- 
other has  a  rope  attached  at  the  lower  end  of  the  handle 
and  pulls  on  it. 

The  grass  cutting  tool  is  generally  a  bit  of  old  buggy 
tire  sharpened  at  one  end  and  bent  at  the  other  end  for 
a  handle.  When  grass  is  to  be  cut  the  man  takes  hold 
of  a  handful  of  grass  in  the  left  hand  and  pushes  the 
cutting  tool  a  little  under  the  surface  of  the  ground  to 
get  all  he  can,  root  and  all,  so  that  a  freshly  cut  hay 
field  has  no  stubble  in  sight,  but  looks  as  though  it  had 
been  harrowed.  The  method  of  cutting  grass  in  India 
is  an  interesting  side  light  on  the  cheapness  of  human 
life  and  the  expensiveness  of  grass. 

The  Standard  Oil  tin  occupies  an  unique  place  in  the 
domestic  economy  of  India.  It  used  to  be  very  cheap, 
about  five  cents  a  tin.  It  is  now  worth  thirty.  It  is 
used  for  storing  seed,  jewelry,  oil,  water,  in  fact  any- 
thing that  needs  a  water-tight  container  that  can  resist 
white  ants.  When  worn  out  the  sides  are  used  for  roof- 
ing houses  and  temples. 

Comparing  the  Indian  farmer's  capital  invested  in  his 
land  with  the  investment  of  the  average  American  farmer 
the  total  is  very  small,  and  the  investment  per  acre  is 


16  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

almost  negligible  in  India  as  compared  with  the  im- 
proved farm  lands  in  America.  The  family  of  the  In- 
dian tenant  farmer  usually  plans  for  one  meal  a  day. 
During  part  of  the  year  this  meal  is  often  uncooked  and 
consists  of  millet  soaked  in  cold  water,  or  a  pulse  parched 
in  hot  sand  and  eaten  a  grain  at  a  time.  When  pulse  is 
cooked,  it  forms  pigeon  pea-soup,  which  is  seasoned  with 
spices,  red  peppers  or  chilis.  Into  this  soup  are  dipped 
the  cakes  of  unleavened  bread  which  have  been  cooked 
over  a  small  fire  of  dried  cowdung.  This  unleavened 
bread  usually  is  made  from  the  cheaper  grains,  since 
wheat  is,  as  a  rule,  too  expensive  for  these  poor  villagers. 
The  strict  upper-caste  Hindu  is  a  vegetarian,  but  the 
low-caste  man  with  whom  Hinduism  is  little  more  than 
a  thin  veneer,  will  eat  any  meat,  except  that  of  the  cow 
or  ox.  Under  the  influence  of  caste  the  outcastes  have 
organized  themselves  into  castes  with  all  the  limitations 
thereof.  One  of  these  low-castes  will  eat  the  flesh  of  the 
cow,  provided  they  have  not  killed  it.  Once  the  animal 
is  dead  they  ask  no  questions  as  to  the  manner  of  its 
death,  whether  from  disease  or  old  age,  but  cook  it  and 
eat  it.  Sometimes  they  do  not  cook  it. 

I  remember  a  little  girl  of  about  fourteen  who  was 
working  on  the  Mission  farm  clearing  out  the  cowstables, 
earning  four  cents  a  day.  We  have  no  difficulty  in  get- 
ting all  the  labor  we  need  because  we  pay  more  than  the 
market  rates,  work  is  regular,  full  pay  is  there  on  pay 
day  without  fines  or  deductions. 

This  girl  was  married  and  rejoicing  in  her  first  baby 
boy.  I  noticed  that  after  the  work  oxen  had  gone  out 
to  plow  this  little  Indian  mother  would  lay  her  dear 
little  brown  baby  son  in  the  manger,  just  as  once  another 
Little  Baby  was  laid  in  a  manger.  She  would  fill  her 


INDIA'S  POVERTY  AND  ILLITERACY       17 

basket  with  cowdung,  put  the  basket  on  her  head,  carry 
it  out  to  the  fields  where  it  was  to  do  its  work,  then 
return  for  another  load,  and  each  time  she  came  back 
she  loved  and  fondled  her  little  one.  She  was  a  glad, 
happy,  proud  little  mother,  singing  at  her  work.  The 
Maharajah  of  Bikaner,  that  Indian  King  who  was  one 
of  the  Indian  representatives  at  the  Peace  Confer- 
ence in  Paris,  invited  me  to  draw  up  a  scheme  for 
agricultural  development  in  his  country.  It  involved 
travel  over  the  state  and  took  me  about  three  weeks. 
When  I  returned  to  Allahabad  the  little  mother  was 
walking  round  sad  and  disconsolate.  I  said  "Hello 
Nanki,  what  is  the  matter  ? "  "0  Sahib,  he  died, ' '  she 
replied.  "Why  did  you  not  take  him  to  the  Mem-Sahib. 
You  know  my  wife  would  have  given  you  medicine  for 
him?"  She  answered,  "It  was  not  medicine  he  needed 
but  food.  I  could  not  nurse  him.  With  four  cents  a 
day,  could  I  buy  milk  for  him  and  food  for  myself? 
Why  Sahib,  if  I  could  not  nurse  him  he  had  to  die." 
Many  Indian  mothers  have  Nanki 's  experience. 

Investigators  like  Sir  William  Hunter  or  Lord  Cur- 
zon,  or  those  Indian  gentlemen  who  have  spoken  of  the 
poverty  of  their  country  in  the  Indian  National  Congress, 
whether  pro-  or  anti-British,  are  all  agreed  that  the  aver- 
age per  capita  income  for  India  ranges  between  seven 
and  twenty-five  dollars  per  year.  This  works  out  at  less 
than  three  to  six  cents  per  day  per  person  for  the  whole 
population.  When  we  remember  that  India  has  a>  large 
and  wealthy  class  of  lawyers,  merchants,  money-lenders 
and  landlords,  it  is  obvious  that  many  of  the  village  folk 
have  less  than  three  cents  a  day  upon  which  to  live. 
About  one  third  of  the  people  of  India  are  living  at  a 


18  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

rate  of  about  two  cents  per  day  or  less,  are  permanently 
underfed  and  ill-nourished,  are  so  short  of  food  that 
they  do  not  get  proper  growth  and  are  generally  too 
weak  to  do  a  fair  day 's  work. 

Now  a  cent  does  not  buy  more  of  the  necessities  of  life 
in  India  than  it  does  in  America,  for  the  price  for  grain 
is  fixed  by  world  conditions ;  wheat  is  in  a  world  market. 
Cotton  cloth  made  in  Lancashire  from  American  cotton, 
competes  with  cloth  made  from  cotton  grown,  spun  and 
woven  in  India. 

It  simply  means  that  Indians,  in  number  approximat- 
ing the  population  of  the  United  States,  about  one  hun- 
dred million,  have  not  yet  come  to  regard  as  possible 
luxuries  many  things  which  America 's  poorest  regard  as 
absolute  necessities.  No  one  can  understand  India  who 
ignores  this  degrading,  debasing  poverty  which  is  one 
inseparable  link  in  the  vicious  circle  of  ignorance,  super- 
stition, oppression,  ill-health,  infant  mortality,  lack  of 
sanitation  and  the  continued  persistence  of  such  epidemic 
diseases  as  cholera,  dysentery,  plague,  enteric,  malaria, 
hook-worm,  small-pox  and  other  preventable  ills.  It  is 
a  poverty  which  robs  manhood,  womanhood,  and  child- 
hood of  all  that  is  best  and  most  worthwhile  in  them. 
India 's  poverty  is  a  menace  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  A 
prosperous  India  producing  more  of  the  things  she  can 
most  easily  produce  could  exchange  them  for  the  manu- 
factured articles  she  needs  but  cannot  produce.  Self- 
interest,  as  well  as  sympathy,  demands  that  a  remedy  be 
found  for  India's  poverty. 

In  many  villages  with  from  one  hundred  to  three  hun- 
dred inhabitants,  one  could  not  find  one  person,  man  or 
woman,  who  could  read  or  write.  Sir  Michael  E.  Sadler, 
K.C.S.I.,  in  reviewing  "Village  Education  in  India," 


INDIA'S  POVERTY  AND  ILLITERACY       19 

shows  that  half  a  million  of  villages  in  British  India  are 
unsupplied  by  a  primary  school.  (International  Review 
of  Missions — October  1920.)  The  last  census  taken  ten 
years  ago  gives  the  degree  of  literacy  as  five  and  six 
tenths  per  cent,  where  the  test  was  the  ability  to  write 
a  letter  of  four  to  five  simple  sentences  in  any  one  of  the 
languages  of  India,  and  to  read  the  reply  to  it.  This 
shows  that  about  ten  per  cent,  of  the  men  and  boys  are 
literate,  and  about  one  per  cent,  of  the  women  and  girls 
over  ten  years  of  age.  Now  when  any  people  is  so 
largely  illiterate  it  is  an  easy  prey  for  oppression  and 
extortion.  Wild  rumors  find  ready  credence.  A  lie 
once  started  is  not  easily  caught  up  and  corrected.  In- 
dia suffers  in  full  measure  the  penalty  for  so  great  a 
degree  of  ignorance.  Illiteracy  immensely  increases  the 
troubles  of  government,  especially  when  the  government 
is  a  foreign  one.  A  demagogue  determined  to  make 
trouble  can  go  among  an  illiterate  people  and  stir  them 
up  into  a  state  of  frenzy  by  telling  either  deliberate  false- 
hoods, or  by  so  twisting  the  truth  as  to  misrepresent  it.  It 
is  very  difficult  for  the  Government  to  correct  this,  since 
the  harm  is  done  before  the  Government  is  aware  of  it. 
At  the  root  of  hatred,  is  fear,  and  at  the  root  of  fear,  is 
ignorance.  Once  the  hatred  and  suspicion  have  been 
aroused,  it  requires  months  of  hard  work  to  put  out  the 
flame,  and  to  establish  peace.  Any  one  who  is  familiar 
with  modern  India  and  who  is  watching  with  deepest 
sympathy  and  good  will  the  progress  of  the  greatest  ad- 
venture in  democratic  government  which  the  world  has 
ever  seen,  cannot  but  wonder  at  its  chances  of  success 
when  ninety  four  and  four-tenths  per  cent,  of  the  popula- 
tion is  illiterate.  The  educated  Indian  is  the  peer  of  any 
educated  man  anywhere,  and  as  fit  for  self-government. 


20  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

Six  millions  have  been  enfranchised  in  India.  The 
leadership  rests  on  about  a  quarter  of  a  million  who  have 
the  necessary  education.  It  is  the  uneducated  Indians 
that  constitute  the  problem.  I  am  anxious  to  see  the 
day  when  India  shall  take  her  proper  place  as  one  of  the 
great  self-governing  peoples  of  the  world.  The  British 
officials  and  the  European  commercial  community  have 
put  on  record  their  desire  actively  to  assist  in  making  the 
Montague  Chelmsford  Reforms  a  success,  but  many  more 
schools  will  have  to  be  built  and  filled  with  Indian  boys 
and  girls  before  India  will  be  able  to  accept  her  fair 
share  of  the  responsibilities  of  the  world,  and  carry  her 
part  of  the  burden  of  modern  civilization. 

Bad  and  crippling  as  this  lack  of  education  is  among 
the  men  of  India,  in  order  to  see  the  most  far-reaching 
and  cumulative  evil  effects  of  illiteracy  it  is  necessary 
to  realize  the  meaning  of  illiteracy  among  the  women 
and  girls  of  India,  "When  we  consider  the  inferior  so- 
cial status  of  women  in  India ;  the  purdah  system  which 
shuts  them  off  by  themselves,  keeps  them  prisoners  for 
life,  often  in  insanitary,  ill-lighted,  ill-ventilated  quar- 
ters; the  fact  that  women  are  by  nature  more  conserva- 
tive than  men;  and  that  in  the  early  and  most  impres- 
sionable days  of  life  the  children  are  under  the  care  of 
mothers,  only  one  out  of  a  hundred  of  whom  can  write 
her  own  name ;  we  ask  what  chance  has  the  Indian  boy  or 
girl  compared  with  the  American  boy  or  girl?  The  il- 
literate Indian  mother  has  her  mind  filled  with  supersti- 
tion, myth,  suspicion,  and  the  consequent  dread  and 
terror  and  darkness  that  cramp  and  dwarf  life.  The 
mother  can  convey  to  her  child  only  what  she  herself  has 
in  her  own  mind.  The  woman  of  India  has  had  it  im- 
pressed upon  her  that  she  is  inferior  to  the  man.  She 


INDIA'S  POVERTY  AND  ILLITERACY       21 

is  often  a  chattel,  degraded,  debased.  This  treatment 
causes  her  to  lose  her  self-respect.  A  survey  of  the  field 
of  Indian  life  shows  no  more  devitalizing  handicap 
clamped  upon  a  great  people  than  the  illiteracy  of  the 
nation's  motherhood.  There  is  most  urgent  need  that 
the  Christian  women  of  the  world  help  their  illiterate 
sisters  in  India  to  receive  the  same  generous  heritage 
which  they  themselves  take  as  a  matter  of  course,  seldom 
realizing  that  they  owe  their  position  of  equality  with 
men,  and  freedom  to  decide  their  own  life's  partner  and 
work,  to  Jesus,  who  is  the  world's  first  Gentleman.  It  is 
only  as  Christian  men  obey  Him  that  woman  has  a 
chance  as  an  individual  with  a  soul,  and  a  right  to  choose 
her  own  life,  to  control  her  own  person,  and  to  say  who 
shall  be  the  father  of  her  children. 

The  causes  for  India's  poverty  are  many,  but  the  chief 
of  them  are  such  as  can  only  be  removed  by  the  Indians 
themselves  for  they  are  related  to  the  religion  of  the 
Hindus.  I  believe  the  causes  for  India's  poverty  to  be: 
1.  Caste;  2.  Too  many  cattle  that  are  an  economic  loss 
to  the  country;  3.  The  great  army  of  able-bodied  men, 
over  five  millions  of  them,  who  toil  not  neither  do  they 
spin,  the  religious  mendicants  or  "faqirs."  But  the 
greatest  of  these  is  Caste. 


"And  it  shall  come  to  pass,  if  ye  shall  hearken  diligently  unto 
my  commandments  which  I  command  you  this  day,  to  love  the 
Lord  your  God,  and  to  serve  him  with  all  your  heart  and  with 
all  your  soul,  That  I  will  give  you  the  rain  of  your  land  in  his 
due  season,  the  first  rain  and  the  latter  rain,  that  thou  mayest 
gather  in  thy  corn,  and  thy  wine,  and  thine  oil.  And  I  will 
send  grass  in  thy  fields  for  thy  cattle,  that  thou  mayest  eat  and 
be  full.  Take  heed  to  yourselves  that  your  heart  be  not  de- 
ceived, and  ye  turn  aside  and  serve  other  gods  and  worship 
them.  And  then  the  Lord's  wrath  be  kindled  against  you,  and 
he  shut  up  the  heaven,  that  there  be  no  rain,  and  that  the 
land  yield  not  her  fruit;  and  lest  ye  perish  quickly  from  off 
the  good  land  which  the  Lord  giveth  you."  Deut.  11 : 13-17. 

"Neither  is  there  salvation  in  any  other:  for  there  is  none 
other  name  under  heaven  given  among  men,  whereby  we  must 
be  saved."  Acts  4 : 12. 


CHAPTER  III 

CASTE,  A  LIMITING  FACTOR 

Observation  shows  that  the  "Caste  System,"  that  bed- 
rock of  the  Hindu  religion,  is  the  fundamental  cause  for 
India's  poverty,  in  that  it  is  the  greatest  factor  in  limit- 
ing production.  It  does  this  in  a  number  of  ways.  For 
instance — I  employed  a  sweeper  whose  work  kept  him 
occupied  for  less  than  two  hours  a  day.  His  wages  were 
two  dollars  a  month.  Indian  servants  feed  themselves. 
He  had  a  wife  and  six  children.  When  I  paid  him  his 
wages  he  held  it  in  his  hand  and  looked  at  it.  He  said, 
"Sahib,  it  is  very  hard  to  feed  eight  people  on  such  a 
small  sum."  I  answered  that  I  did  not  see  how  he  did 
it.  I  said,  "I  would  like  to  pay  you  more  money  if  you 
earned  it.  The  gardener  has  asked  for  help  to  dig  in  the 
garden.  If  you  will  go  and  help  him  I  will  gladly  pay 
you."  He  replied  that  he  would  go  and  dig  in  the 
garden.  He  started  in  to  work.  In  a  few  minutes  the 
gardener  came  to  me  'and  asked  for  his  pay.  I  said, 
"What  is  the  matter?  Are  you  not  satisfied  with  your 
work?  Do  I  not  treat  you  fairly?"  He  replied,  "0 
yes,  Sahib,  you  treat  me  all  right  and  the  work  is  all 
right,  but  I  must  leave."  "Why?  What  is  the  matter 
that  you  cannot  work?"  "Well,  Sahib,  you  have  sent 
that  sweeper  to  work  in  the  garden.  If  he  stays  I  go." 
' '  But,  you  asked  me  for  aid  and  I  sent  him  to  help  you. 
He  has  a  wife  and  six  children  and  gets  two  dollars  a 

23 


24  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

month.  You  have  a  wife  and  four  children  and  get  two 
and  a  half  dollars  a  month.  Yet,  you  complain  of  the 
difficulty.  How  much  harder  then  for  him.  So  I 
thought  if  he  were  willing  to  work  extra,  I  would  pay 
him  for  it,  and  you  would  get  your  digging  done  and  he 
would  have  more  food  for  his  family."  "Yes,  Sahib 
that  is  all  true,  but  you  see  he  is  not  of  my  caste  and  so 
cannot  work  in  the  garden  with  me.  If  he  stays,  I  go. 
If  I  stay  while  he  works  in  the  garden  my  castefellows 
will  not  drink  water  or  smoke  the  huqqa  with  me,  and 
I  cannot  suffer  the  disgrace  of  this  just  for  a  sweeper. 
So  I  must  leave."  I  call  the  sweeper  away  from  the 
garden  and  explain  the  trouble  to  him.  He  understands 
perfectly  well  the  reason.  We  both  know  that  if  the 
gardener  leaves,  I  cannot  get  another.  They  would  boy- 
cott me  if  I  allowed  my  gardener  to  leave  for  such  a 
reason.  So  the  sweeper  must  look  otherwhere  to  sell  his 
labor,  and  always  with  the  same  result,  so  with  sad,  re- 
signed air  he  accepts  his  fate.  Not  the  oppression  of  the 
Indian  by  the  foreigner,  but  the  oppression  of  the  In- 
dian by  the  system  of  caste  which  is  the  heart  and  essence 
of  the  religion  of  the  Hindus.  Certain  castes  may  not 
touch  the  plow  or  the  digging  tool ;  others  may  not  apply 
manure  to  their  fields.  Caste  is  often  behind  the  preju- 
dice against  the  introduction  of  labor  saving  machinery. 
Certain  castes  may  grow  field  crops  but  may  not  grow 
vegetables,  others  may  grow  vegetables  but  not  field 
crops.  In  America  it  is  the  custom  for  nearly  every 
farmer  to  have  a  garden  in  which  is  grown,  in  season, 
sufficient  fresh  vegetables  for  the  family.  The  discovery 
of  the  importance  of  the  "vitamines"  which  exist  in 
fresh,  green  vegetables  and  in  milk  and  fruit  and  the 
part  which  they  play  in  the  growth  and  development  of 


CASTE,  A  LIMITING  FACTOR  25 

human  beings,  indicates  that  not  a  little  of  the  malnutri- 
tion of  India  is  due  to  the  absence  of  fresh  vegetables  in 
the  diet  of  the  farmer.  This  limiting  of  production  is 
one  of  the  economic  aspects  of  caste,  but  the  caste  system 
also  has  its  religious  and  its  social  aspects. 

"In  Southern  India,  as  is  well  known,  there  exist  im- 
mense numbers  of  so-called  untouchable  classes,  to  whom, 
particularly  on  the  Malabar  side,  are  denied  what  might 
be  called  the  elementary  rights  of  human  beings.  They 
are  condemned  to  live  far  beyond  the  outskirts  of  the 
villages;  they  are  forbidden  to  use  many  of  the  public 
roads;  their  very  approach  within  a  certain  number  of 
yards  is  accounted  contamination.  As  a  result  of  this, 
these  depressed  classes  live  in  hovels  and  seem  to  delight 
in  dirt.  From  a  casual  appearance  it  would  appear  that 
the  great  majority  of  them  have  lost  whatever  innate 
love  of  cleanliness  human  beings  may  be  expected  to 
possess.  They  have  no  education,  because  they  cannot 
afford  to  take  advantage  of  it  even  if  it  is  proffered 
free.  They  have  no  outlook  in  life ;  they  are  condemned 
to  the  most  degrading  forms  of  labor.  But  the  root  of 
the  matter  is  less  economic  than  social.  Until  these  de- 
pressed classes  can  be  put  on  a  level  with  their  fellow- 
men,  can  be  treated  as  equals,  and  relieved  from  the 
moral  degradation  into  which  they  have  been  thrown 
by  centuries  of  scorn,  it  is  difficult  to  do  very  much  with 
them.  Official  orders  can  be  passed  in  such  directions 
as  insisting  that  children  of  the  depressed  classes  should 
be  admitted  into  schools,  that  members  of  these  classes 
should  have  proper  houses  and  free  access  to  the  public 
water-supply;  but  in  the  absence  of  public  opinion  it  is 
quite  impossible  for  Government  to  enforce  these  orders 
which  fly  in  the  face  of  habits  centuries  old.  In  addi- 


26  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

tion  to  the  particular  problems  presented  by  the  un- 
touchable class,  which  are  principally  characteristic  of 
Southern  India,  there  is  also  the  All-India  problem  of 
the  general  condition  of  the  peasantry.  Recent  settle- 
ment operations  in  certain  parts  of  Northern  India  have 
revealed  that  in  some  places,  the  average  agricultural 
laborer  is  not  infrequently  compelled  in  time  of  stress 
to  mortgage  his  personal  liberty.  In  return  for  a  small 
sum  of  money,  which  he  may  happen  to  need  at  the  mo- 
ment, he  agrees  to  serve  the  man  from  whom  he  has  bor- 
rowed. The  money  is  not  repaid,  nor  is  it  intended  to 
be  repaid;  but  the  borrower  remains  the  life-long  bond 
slave  of  his  creditor.  For  his  work  he  merely  receives 
an  inadequate  dole  of  food,  and  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses is  in  the  position  of  a  medieval  serf."  (From 
"India  in  1919,"  pp.  12^-126.) 

In  its  religious  aspect  caste  fixes  the  status  of  the  in- 
dividual by  birth,  and  birth  alone.  It  determines  what 
a  man  shall  do  and  the  manner  of  his  doing  it  for  the 
whole  of  his  existence  on  this  earth.  By  identifying 
conduct  with  religion  many  things  which  are  not  desira- 
ble from  the  standpoint  of  sanitation  and  health  are  in- 
dissolubly  linked  through  caste  with  the  Hindu  religion. 
These  may  not  be  interfered  with  by  the  British  gov- 
ernment, which  has  held  the  good-will  of  India  in  the 
past,  largely  because  it  has  been  neutral  in  religion,  and 
has  made  it  its  policy  to  interfere  in  matters  religious  as 
little  as  possible.  It  is  true  that  Government  interfered 
with  the  custom  "Suttee"  whereby  the  widow  was  burnt 
alive  upon  the  funeral  pyre  of  her  dead  husband,  but  it 
did  not  gain  any  popular  credit  for  this  interference. 
The  widow  was  and  still  is  regarded  as  the  actual  cause 
of  her  husband's  death,  and  possessed  of  an  evil  spirit. 


27 

Therefore  the  widow  is  a  "kill-joy"  in  any  family,  a  per- 
son who  would  bring  bad  luck  to  any  festive  gathering. 
For  this  reason  it  was  regarded  as  better  that  she  with 
her  evil  spirit,  should  depart  with  her  dead  husband 
even  though  that  meant  burning  alive.  Again  it  is  very 
difficult  to-day  for  a  Hindu  woman  to  obtain  proper 
attention  at  child-birth.  At  this  time  she  is  considered 
ceremonially  unclean,  and  so  can  be  attended  only  by 
low-caste  midwives  who  display  an  amazing  unwilling- 
ness to  adopt  either  cleanly  habits  or  modern  ideas.  Per- 
haps it  would  be  fairer  to  say  that  their  ideas  of  cleanli- 
ness are  different  from  our  own,  for  the  newly  born  babe 
is  usually  treated  with  a  dust  bath  or  mud  plaster  which 
frequently  causes  lock-jaw,  for  the  soil  of  India  is  im- 
pregnated with  tetanus  germs. 

From  another  aspect  caste  is  the  direct  denial  of  hu- 
man brotherhood  as  understood  in  the  New  Testament. 
Caste  separates  men  into  water-tight  compartments, 
caste  insists  that  men  born  of  woman  differ  in  kind. 
Some  at  the  top  of  the  scale  are  "twice  born"  or  "di- 
vine," others  at  the  bottom  of  the  scale  are  inferior  or 
in  the  significant  phraseology  of  their  own  countrymen 
called  "untouchable"  and  considered  sub-human.  It  is 
impossible  for  caste  adherents  to  pray  "Our  Father" 
and  yet  these  two  words  applied  to  God  in  the  Lord's 
prayer  contain  the  idea  upon  which  all  human  brother- 
hood, and  therefore  all  human  justice,  is  founded.  A  low 
caste  Hindu  who  had  been  trained  in  Western  medicine, 
a  highly  educated  gentleman,  was  haled  into  court  at 
Calicut  for  polluting  a  village  tank  because  he,  a  low- 
caste  man,  walked  within  a  certain  distance  of  the  tank. 
He  was  acquitted,  but  the  case  caused  much  excitement. 
(See  p.  129,  "India  in  1919.") 


28  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

To  return  to  what  is  both  the  social  and  economic 
aspect  of  caste.  There  is  an  unwillingness  to  have  sani- 
tary latrines  in  the  villages.  The  people  go  out  into  the 
fields  to  relieve  themselves  and  fail  completely  to  follow 
the  Mosaic  law  in  this  matter  (Deut.  23 : 13)  of  the  dis- 
posing of  refuse.  Such  an  omission  is  the  inevitable 
cause  of  widespread  disease,  the  contamination  of  the 
water  supply,  and  the  fouling  of  all  approaches  to  the 
village.  Added  to  objections  of  this  nature,  caste  re- 
stricts marriage  within  very  narrow  limits,  caste  pre- 
vents those  social  amenities  which  the  Westerner  as- 
sociates with  his  meal  times  and  therefore  hinders  the 
consequent  interchange  of  ideas.  It  supports  a  joint 
family  system  in  which  all  share  alike,  where  the  drones 
and  the  ne'er-do-wells  can  take  the  heart  out  of  the  work- 
ing members  of  the  family  by  refusing  to  work,  but  in- 
sist upon  being  fed.  It  causes  the  minute  distribution 
of  all  property  and  thus  lies  behind  the  present  un- 
economic system  of  land  holding  where  the  farm  is  broken 
up  into  scattered  strips  and  into  holdings  so  small  as  to 
prevent  a  family  from  obtaining  a  decent  living  from  the 
produce  of  such  a  tiny  acreage. 

Let  it  be  understood,  however,  that  in  this  criticism 
of  the  system  of  caste  as  it  stands  to-day,  condemnation 
is  not  wholesale.  Caste  is  not  all  bad.  It  has  its  good 
side.  Surely  a  system  which  has  succeeded  in  holding 
a  great  people  together  for  untold  centuries  must  have 
in  it  elements  of  unusual  cohesive  strength.  The  trouble 
is  that  caste  has  undergone  so  little  change  that  it  has 
failed  to  adapt  itself  to  the  changing  conditions  of  hu- 
man life.  Caste  is  outgrown.  It  is  an  anachronism  in 
a  world  in  which  the  railroad,  the  telegraph,  the  penny 


CASTE,  A  LIMITING  FACTOR  29 

post,  the  steam-boat  and  the  printing  press  have  ceased 
to  be  seven  day  wonders. 

There  are  over  fifty  millions  of  outcastes  or  "untouch- 
ables" in  India.  Men  and  women  at  the  bottom  of  the 
social  scale,  who  do  the  lowest  and  meanest  tasks,  some 
are  scavengers,  some  will  eat  carrion,  some  are  filthy  and 
disgusting  in  their  habits.  They  have  been  kept  down 
by  the  higher  castes.  They  have  been  denied  the  right 
to  education,  to  worship  in  the  temples,  to  own  or  read 
the  sacred  scriptures  of  the  Hindus.  They  are  said  to  be 
born  at  the  bottom  of  a  horrible  pit  and  born  to  stay 
there.  They  are  considered  to  be  in  their  proper  place, 
and  there  is  no  way  out.  They  are  considered  to  be  in 
the  place  assigned  them  by  the  Almighty  and  under 
orthodox  Hinduism  there  is  no  possibility  for  them  to 
rise.  They  are  degraded  and  debased,  kept  down  by 
unmeasured  centuries  of  oppression  and  tyranny. 

The  missionaries  of  Christ  have  gone  among  these 
lowly,  despised  folk  and  have  told  them  of  the  One  who 
came  to  heal  the  broken  hearted,  to  deliver  the  captive, 
to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised.  This  message  is 
so  different  from  anything  else  that  they  have  ever 
heard  that  it  seems  almost  too  good  to  be  true.  It  is 
hard  to  persuade  them  that  there  is  a  way  out  of  their 
unspeakable  degradation  and  bondage  and  poverty. 
But  some  of  them  are  persuaded  and  are  coming  out. 
They  are  turning  their  faces  towards  the  light  and  fol- 
lowing it.  Over  fifteen  thousand  a  month  are  becoming 
Christian  and  it  is  this  Christward  tide  of  humanity  that 
has  been  called  the  ' '  Mass  Movement  in  India. ' '  Whole 
villages  of  certain  low-castes  are  being  baptized  at  one 
time.  If  only  one  or  two  come  out  at  one  time,  they  are 


30  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

so  persecuted  that  missions  hesitate  to  accept  them.  It 
is  better  to  wait  till  the  few  have  gained  more.  The 
whole  village  is  better  able  to  protect  itself  in  its  new 
faith  than  the  isolated  individual.  Many  more  than 
actually  are  baptized  each  month  want  to  be  baptized, 
but  because  of  lack  of  missionaries  and  lack  of  properly 
trained  Indian  preachers  and  teachers,  the  Christians  of 
India  are  saying  to  the  greatest  Godward  tide  of  history 
"Not  quite  so  fast,  you  are  swamping  us,  we  cannot  take 
care  of  you,  wait  till  we  get  caught  up  with  our  schools 
and  teachers  and  churches  and  preachers."  The  prob- 
lems of  Christian  missions  in  India  to-day  are  not  prob- 
lems caused  by  failure  to  get  converts  but  are  problems 
caused  by  the  successes  of  so  great  an  ingathering  that 
we  have  not  room  to  contain  so  great  a  harvest.  The  per- 
centage of  illiteracy  is  growing  in  the  Christian  church 
in  India  to-day.  Only  seventeen  per  cent,  of  the  Christ- 
ians can  read  or  write.  It  is  not  because  the  missions  are 
doing  less  educational  work.  They  are  actually  doing 
more.  The  low-caste  converts  are  almost  totally  illiter- 
ate and  it  is  this  great  illiterate  host  of  believers  that 
are  increasing  the  percentage  of  illiteracy. 

There  was  a  day  when  the  missionary  felt  that  bap- 
tism was  the  end.  To-day  he  knows  it  is  only  the  begin- 
ning. When  these  people  come  they  are  still  poor,  still 
ignorant,  their  eyes  not  yet  clear,  so  that  they  see  men 
as  trees,  walking.  They  have  in  them  the  inheritance  of 
centuries  of  oppression  and  degradation.  If  we  only 
baptize  them  and  leave  them  alone  we  do  them  infinite 
harm.  Baptized  they  are  babes  in  Christ  and  need  the 
milk  of  the  Word  that  they  may  grow  up  to  the  full 
measure  of  the  stature  of  men  in  Christ  Jesus.  How  can 


CASTE,  A  LIMITING  FACTOR  31 

we  help  such  a  lowly,  dependent  folk,  who  have  no  tradi- 
tions of  independence  or  liberty  to  brace  them?  If  we 
dole  out  charity  to  them  we  rob  them  of  the  very  thing 
they  need  training  in  most  of  all.  It  is  not  doles  of 
charity  they  need  but  help  to  help  themselves.  Teach 
them  by  their  own  efforts  how  to  earn  their  own  living, 
and  such  a  living  as  will  enable  them  not  only  to  have 
enough  to  eat,  and  to  be  decently  clothed,  but  a  living 
which  contemplates  education  for  the  children,  contribu- 
tions to  schools  and  churches,  to  hospitals  and  libraries,  a 
living  which  enables  them  to  take  full  responsibility  as 
citizens. 

I  believe  the  best  and  quickest  way  to  do  this  is  to 
train  them  in  agriculture,  train  the  best  and  brightest  in 
a  good  central  institution  so  that  the  ones  so  trained  can 
go  out  to  their  own  folk  in  the  villages.  The  ones  trained 
in  modern  farming  can  earn  much  more  than  the  un- 
trained, so  much  more  in  fact  that  they  can  pay  their 
own  way  and  take  their  part  as  self-supporting  members 
of  the  community.  Some  people  who  have  seen  this 
mass  movement  work  criticize  it.  They  say  these  peo- 
ple do  not  understand  Christianity,  that  their  motives 
are  mixed  and  often  unworthy,  that  they  come  to  Christ 
for  what  they  can  get  out  of  Him,  that  they  are  mer- 
cenary Christians,  that  they  come  for  the  loaves  and 
fishes,  that  they  are  rice  Christians.  Having  said  so 
much  they  think  the  work  is  condemned  and  the  case 
closed,  but  is  it  ?  Grant  all  they  say,  it  means  that  these 
poor  folk  see  in  Christianity  more  than  in  their  old  faith. 
While  adhering  to  their  old  faith  material  progress  was 
impossible,  under  Christianity  it  is  possible.  Under 
their  old  faith  they  were  denied  common  human  rights, 


32  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

under  Christianity  they  are  recognized  as  brothers, 
under  their  old  faith  they  were  denied  the  spiritual 
resources  of  that  faith,  under  Christianity  their  only 
limit  is  their  capacity  to  comprehend  the  length  and 
breadth  and  depth  and  height  of  the  love  of  God  for 
the  lost.  It  always  seems  to  me  that  Jesus  must  have 
had  the  low-caste  in  mind  when  He  stated  His  mission 
to  be  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  was  lost.  After 
all,  it  is  not  the  motive  with  which  men  or  women  come 
to  Christ  that  matters,  but  the  motive  with  which  they 
stay  with  Him,  and  many  can  bear  witness  that  God  is 
raising  up  to  Himself  out  of  these  whom  man  despises, 
a  body  of  believers  that  are  the  spiritual  equals  of  any 
body  of  believers  anywhere  on  earth.  In  faithfulness 
even  to  death,  in  the  last  great  supreme  sacrifice  for 
His  dear  sake,  they  are  abundant  witnesses.  The  low- 
caste  converts  educated  in  our  mission  schools  and  col- 
leges often  attain  positions  of  distinction  and  high  re- 
sponsibility. They  move  freely  among  high-caste  peo- 
ple, where,  had  they  not  been  converted  and  trained, 
they  never  could  have  gone.  As  I  see  the  progress  of 
these  masses  to  Jesus  I  come  to  see  that  the  only  cure 
for  caste  is  Christ.  That  He  effectually  takes  away  any 
disability  that  caste  causes.  That  in  this  life  if  any 
man  be  in  Christ  Jesus  he  is  a  new  creation. 


"And  Moses  said  unto  the  children  of  Israel,  See,  the  Lord 
hath  called  by  name  Bezaleel  the  son  of  Uri,  the  son  of  Hur, 
of  the  tribe  of  Judah;  And  he  hath  filled  him  with  the  spirit 
of  God,  in  wisdom,  in  understanding,  and  in  knowledge,  and 
in  all  manner  of  workmanship;  And  to  devise  curious  works, 
to  work  in  gold,  and  in  silver,  and  in  brass,  And  in  the  cut- 
ting of  stones,  to  set  them,  and  in  carving  of  wood,  to  make 
any  manner  of  cunning  work.  And  he  hath  put  in  his  heart 
that  he  may  teach,  both  he,  and  Aholiab,  the  son  of  Ahisa- 
maoh,  of  the  tribe  of  Dan.  Them  hath  he  filled  with  wisdom 
of  heart,  to  work  all  manner  of  work,  of  the  engraver,  and 
of  the  cunning  workman,  aad  of  the  embroiderer,  in  blue,  and 
in  purple,  in  scarlet,  and  in  fine  linen,  and  of  the  weaver, 
even  of  them  that  do  any  work,  and  of  those  that  devise 
cunning  work."  Exodus  35:  30-35. 


CHAPTER  IV 

MISSION  INDUSTRIES 

As  I  had  gone  to  India  to  work  among  the  outcaste 
people  I  was  eager  to  see  what  the  work  was  like,  so 
on  some  of  the  longer  college  vacations  I  went  to  Etah 
where  I  had  originally  hoped  to  go  to  work  among  the 
outcastes.  I  also  went  on  tour  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Bandy 
and  saw  the  thousands  of  converts  gathered  in  by  this  de- 
voted, original  and  energetic  couple.  I  saw  the  great 
poverty  of  these  new  converts,  I  watched  them  bring  in 
their  gifts  of  eggs,  chickens,  grain  and  potatoes  as  well 
as  of  cash.  I  found  that  most  of  them  were  tithing,  that 
is,  were  giving  one-tenth  of  all  they  received  of  money 
or  produce  in  order  to  support  their  preachers  and 
teachers  and  to  build  their  churches  and  schools.  I  also 
saw  that  where  the  family  income,  whether  measured  in 
money  or  in  kind,  was  two  dollars  a  month  it  was  im- 
possible for  a  tenth  of  so  small  a  sum  to  do  all  that  was 
needed  to  bring  about  a  self-supporting  church.  I 
looked  forward  and  tried  to  imagine  the  day  when  the 
missionary  program  in  India  should  have  been  completed. 
A  self-supporting,  self-governing,  self-propagating  Chris- 
tian church  seemed  the  minimum  for  which  to  look  for- 
ward. It  was  obvious  that  if  the  average  church  mem- 
ber was  living  at  a  rate  of  from  one  to  three  cents  per 
person  per  day  something  would  have  to  be  done  to 
increase  the  earning  capacity  and  the  income  of  the 

34 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  35 

church  membership.  What  looked  like  a  purely  ecclesias- 
tical problem  had  an  economic  aspect  that  could  not 
be  ignored. 

I  noticed  that  most  of  the  large  mission  stations  had 
some  kind  of  industrial  work.  Iron-working,  carpentry, 
shoe-making  and  tailoring  were  the  favorite  occupa- 
tions. The  great  famines  had  left  thousands  of  orphan 
children  to  be  cared  for.  America  was  keeping  many  of 
these  thousands  alive  by  subscribing  at  the  rate  of  fifteen 
dollars  per  orphan  per  year  to  feed,  clothe  and  train 
these  boys  and  girls.  But  fifteen  dollars  was  not  enough 
to  do  this  properly  for  a  year.  Although  so  little  was 
spent  upon  the  children,  the  Missions  expected  a  return 
in  the  improvement  of  the  children  similar  to  what  an 
American  child  in  the  public  school  system  would  show. 
Great  dissatisfaction  was  expressed  that  the  children 
developed  so  slowly  and  when  turned  out  of  the  or- 
phanage were  able  to  earn  so  little.  How  much  could 
American  children  have  done  under  the  same  kind  of 
treatment?  Investigation  shows  that  education  is  an 
investment  which  in  general  pays  the  largest  cumulative 
dividend  on  the  largest  investment.  Not  enough  was  in- 
vested in  the  low-caste  convert  or  in  the  famine  orphan 
to  earn  a  satisfactory  dividend.  Some  of  the  mission- 
aries were  actually  afraid  of  doing  humanitarian  work 
or  of  being  interested  in  social  service.  The  division 
was  made  between  "real  mission  work"  and  educa- 
tional and  industrial  work  done  by  missionaries.  The 
immortal  soul,  they  said,  was  bound  for  eternity  and 
must  therefore  receive  the  chief  emphasis.  The  saving 
of  the  soul  was  the  chief  end  of  the  missionary  effort, 
and  the  less  the  missionary  had  to  do  with  the  body  and 
the  material  things  which  the  body  demanded  in  order 


36  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

to  be  strong,  healthy  and  efficient,  the  better  for  him. 
They  used  to  talk  of  the  great  danger  of  the  "rice  con- 
verts," of  those  who  followed  for  the  loaves  and  fishes 
and  of  those  who  sought  material  gain.  The  Bible  says, 
"What?  know  ye  not  that  your  body  is  the  temple 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  .  .  .  therefore  glorify  God  in  your 
body. ' '  Cor.  6 : 19-20.  The  body  surely  has  its  rightful 
demand  for  care  and  protection. 

Investigation  shows  that  most  mission  industrial  en- 
terprises in  orphanages  and  for  low-caste  converts  are 
failures,  that  generally,  just  as  soon  as  a  mission  could 
close  down  its  industrial  work  it  did  so,  and  only  opened 
again  when  famine  provided  large  numbers  of  children 
to  be  cared  for.  The  causes  of  failure  are : 

First:  The  lack  of  properly  and  technically  trained 
missionaries.  Seldom  did  a  mission  have  a  member,  man 
or  woman,  with  the  necessary  technical  training  to  make 
industrial  work  a  success.  Most  missionaries  have 
special  training  for  evangelistic  work,  that  does  not 
imply  the  training  necessary  for  a  good  blacksmith,  or 
carpenter  or  shoe-maker.  It  would  be  much  wiser  for 
Foreign  Mission  Boards  to  take  a  leaf  out  of  business 
experience  and  to  appoint  missionaries  who  have  had 
special  training  for  the  particular  piece  of  work  to  be 
done.  An  evangelist  for  evangelistic  work:  a  black- 
smith for  iron  work:  a  carpenter  for  working  in  wood: 
a  farmer  for  farming.  All  should  be  controlled  by  that 
One  Spirit  without  which  no  mission  work  can  succeed. 
"There  are  diversities  of  operations,  but  it  is  the  same 
God  which  worketh  all  in  all." 

Granted  that  a  certain  ordained  evangelist  who  had 
been  brought  up  on  a  farm,  and  remembers  the  labors  of 
his  youth  makes  a  success  of  managing  an  orphanage, 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  37 

making  up  in  enthusiasm  what  he  lacks  in  technical  skill, 
the  boys  under  such  a  missionary  may  be  passably 
trained  in  their  particular  trade,  so  that,  if  the  mission- 
ary does  the  business  managing  and  the  marketing,  they 
are  able  to  earn  anywhere  from  three  to  ten  dollars  per 
month. 

Perhaps  this  successful  missionary  goes  on  furlough 
or  dies.  The  mission  has  to  make  provision  for  his 
work.  Often  the  most  awkward,  three-cornered  person, 
who  cannot  fit  in  anywhere  else,  and  who  ought  to  be 
sent  home,  is  put  in  charge  of  the  industrial  work  be- 
cause it  is  argued  that  he  will  do  less  harm  to  "real 
mission  work"  there  than  anywhere  else.  Some  of  the 
mission  industries  are  big  enough  and  involve  sums  of 
money  large  enough  to  demand  real  business  manage- 
ment. The  mission  usually  makes  no  provision  for  the 
continuity  of  the  industrial  work;  when  one  man  drops 
out  there  is  no  specially  trained  man  to  step  in.  If 
missions  are  going  to  engage  in  industry  at  all,  it  would 
be  well  to  see  that  properly  trained  men  and  sufficient 
capital  are  obtained  in  order  to  carry  it  on  with  some 
measure  of  success.  I  take  it  that  in  a  country  like 
India,  with  famine  ever  threatening  and  poverty  ever 
present,  missions  will  be  compelled  to  continue  in  in- 
dustrial work  for  some  time  to  come. 

Second:  The  reason  for  failure  often  is: — the  in- 
dustry chosen  is  not  suitable,  or  located  in  the  wrong 
place  with  respect  to  markets.  The  caste  system,  in  its 
economic  aspect  gives  to  each  separate  trade  or  occupa- 
tion a  far  greater  power  and  control  over  its  members 
than  a  trades  union  claims  over  its  members  in  America. 
If  the  missionary  trains  a  boy  for  one  of  these  caste 
trades  he  has  to  employ  the  boy  whom  he  has  trained. 


38  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

If  the  boy  leaves  the  mission  in  order  to  follow  his  trade 
in  the  open  market  he  immediately  comes  into  conflict 
with  the  caste  trades  union  which  will  not  only  not  ad- 
mit him,  but  which  will  boycott  anyone  who  employs 
him,  until  he  is  compelled  to  fall  back  into  the  ranks 
of  the  casual  laborer  and  thus  the  missionaries'  effort 
is  largely  wasted.  The  boy  also  does  not  get  a  fair 
chance  in  life. 

Then  too  it  is  not  worth  while  for  a  missionary  to  de- 
vote his  life  to  teaching  shoe-making,  tailoring,  carpen- 
tering or  blacksmithing  in  India.  When  a  Christian  boy 
is  trained  to  any  of  these  trades,  even  if  there  were  not 
the  difficulty  of  caste  tradesmen  to  contend,  with,  the 
wages  he  can  earn  at  present  are  not  such  that  he  can 
live  decently  and  bring  up  a  family  on  them.  His  pre- 
war wages  in  Northern  India  would  have  been  about 
sixteen  cents  per  day.  Wages  have  risen  but  so  have 
prices.  It  is  essential  for  missions  to  train  their  con- 
verts in  those  callings  where  they  are  not  likely  to  run 
counter  to  any  caste  trades  union  and  where  they  may 
be  sure  of  earning  a  living  wage.  There  are  less  caste 
restrictions  in  farming  than  in  any  other  occupation, 
and  those  restrictions  that  do  exist,  usually  apply  to  the 
higher,  rather  than  to  the  lower  castes. 

India  is  about  one  million  eight  hundred  thousand 
square  miles  in  extent,  that  is,  one-half  the  size  of  the 
United  States  and  Alaska.  Nearly  one  million  square 
miles  is  culturable.  About  two  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  square  miles  are  forest.  The  rest  is  called  un- 
culturable  waste.  Much  of  this  unculturable  waste  can 
be  reclaimed  by  modern  methods  of  drainage;  by  pre- 
vention of  erosion;  by  washing  out  harmful  salts  from 
alkali  lands;  and  by  use  of  power  plowing  machinery. 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  39 

According  to  the  official  report  prepared  for  presenta- 
tion in  Parliament — "India  in  1919" — India  has  eighty 
million  acres  in  rice,  and  grows  the  largest  amount  of 
rice  of  any  country  in  the  world. 

India  in  the  season  of  1919-1920  had  about  thirty  mil- 
lion acres  sown  to  wheat  and  grew  over  ten  million  tons 
of  that  staple,  which  was  three  million  tons  more  than 
the  year  before. 

India  had  the  largest  acreage  under  sugar  cane  (about 
half  the  world's  area  under  sugar  cane  is  in  India)  and 
until  1918  grew  more  cane  sugar  than  any  other  country 
on  earth.  The  yield  of  sugar  for  1918  was  estimated 
at  three  million  seven  hundred  thousand  tons. 

India  grows  and  exports  more  tea  than  any  other 
country  in  the  world,  three  hundred  and  eighty  million 
pounds  in  1918. 

India  leads  the  world  in  the  production  of  oil  seeds; 
castor,  linseed,  mustard,  sesamum,  cocoa-nut  and  peanut 
oils. 

India  leads  the  world  in  the  production  of  sorghums 
and  millets;  pigeon  pea  and  other  edible  legumes. 
India  grows  about  eighty  million  tons  of  food  grains 
a  year. 

India  has  a  world  monopoly  in  the  growing  of  jute, 
from  which  all  our  gunny  bags  and  sacks  are  made. 

India  leads  the  world  in  the  production  of  shellac 
for  varnish. 

In  1919  India  grew  six  million  eight  hundred  thousand 
bales  of  cotton  on  over  twenty  million  acres,  each  bale 
weighing  four  hundred  pounds. 

India  has  several  million  acres  under  "Sanai"  which 
yields  a  fiber  like  hemp. 


40  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

India  has  two  hundred  and  sixty  million  head  of 
horned  cattle  and  water  buffaloes. 

India  is  rich  in  fruits  which  include,  on  the  plains, 
the  mango,  the  banana,  the  papita,  the  custard  apple, 
the  bear  jack  fruit,  the  orange  and  citrous  fruits,  in 
the  mountains  grow  apples,  pears,  cherries,  peaches, 
plums,  apricots  and  strawberries.  Many  of  these  were 
introduced  by  Dr.  Carleton  of  the  American  Presbyte- 
rian Mission. 

The  largest  silk  mill  in  the  world  is  in  Kashmir. 

India  is  rich  in  spices  and  condiments  of  all  kinds. 

India  mined  over  twenty-one  million  tons  of  coal  dur- 
ing the  last  year  for  which  figures  were  published.  Oil 
has  just  been  found  in  India  proper. 

This  list  is  not  exhaustive.  It  shows  the  large  aggre- 
gate production  in  India  of  the  world's  staple  crops  and 
their  wide  variety.  On  the  investigation  of  details  it  is 
found  that  India  in  general  uses  to-day  the  same  tools 
and  implements  that  she  used  in  the  time  of  Moses,  that 
the  yields  of  these  crops  per  acre  of  land,  or  per  man 
engaged  on  the  land  raising  the  crop,  are  the  lowest  for 
any  civilized  country  on  earth,  this  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  India's  soil  is  naturally  fertile,  and  the  growing 
season  so  long. 

The  British  Government  started  an  Agricultural  De- 
partment nearly  thirty  years  ago.  The  staff  of  scien- 
tists has  been  somewhat  small  but  the  results  amazing. 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Howard,  Imperial  Economic  Botanists, 
bred  "The  Pusa  Series"  of  wheat  which  was  sown  on 
over  half  a  million  acres  last  year.  It  is  only  ten  years 
since  this  breed  of  wheat  was  in  the  experimental  plot 
stage.  The  net  increase  due  to  this  good  seed  is  at  least 
five  dollars  per  acre  per  year  better  than  the  local  varie- 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  41 

ties  it  displaced,  with  the  present  methods  and  imple- 
ments. But  this  improved  seed  responds  to  better 
methods  in  a  way  the  local  varieties  do  not,  so  that  when 
the  better  methods  are  introduced  a  net  increase  is  ob- 
tained of  fifty  to  one  hundred  per  cent,  more  than  the 
local  varieties  yield.  Dr.  Barber,  Imperial  Botanist, 
worked  on  sugar  cane  for  seven  years.  The  local  variety 
of  cane  sugar  grown  in  Northern  India  is  a  thin,  hard 
cane  chosen  because  of  its  power  to  resist  the  attacks  of 
the  wild  pig,  jackal,  deer  and  disease.  It  responds  only 
slightly  to  manuring  and  better  cultivation.  It  gives 
about  ten  tons  of  cane  per  acre  and  less  than  a  ton  of 
sugar.  The  improved  variety  of  cane  is  giving  up  to 
forty  tons  of  cane  per  acre  with  over  four  tons  of 
sugar. 

Most  of  India's  cotton  is  short  staple,  coarse  fiber, 
low-yielding,  ginning  percentage  25-33  (the  ginning 
percentage  is  the  proportion  of  fiber  or  lint  to  seed). 
Most  of  the  Indian  varieties  have  a  hairy  leaf.  Most 
good  long  staple  cottons  have  a  smooth  leaf.  The  smooth 
leaf  is  readily  attacked  by  insects  while  the  hairy  leaf 
is  not.  Mr.  Leake,  Director  of  Agriculture  of  the 
United  Provinces  at  Cawnpur,  has  crossed  different  varie- 
ties of  cotton  so  that  he  now  has  a  hairy-leafed,  long- 
staple  cotton  with  a  high-ginning  percentage  of  35-40 
per  cent.  This  cotton  is  worth  more  per  pound  than 
the  short  staple.  Mr.  Roberts,  Principal  of  the  Agri- 
cultural College  at  Lyalpur,  Punjab,  has  done  much  to 
increase  the  yields  and  quality  of  American  cotton  grown 
in  the  Punjab.  He  has  further  devised  a  scheme 
for  selling  this  improved  cotton  which  gives  a  fair 
share  of  the  increase  to  the  farmer  who  grew  the 
cotton. 


42  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

Mr.  Clouston,  Director  of  Agriculture  for  the  Central 
Provinces,  has  isolated  a  high  yielding  local  variety, 
"Koseum,"  which  gives  five  dollars  an  acre  net  profit 
more  than  the  local  variety.  A  breed  of  rice  has  been 
isolated  for  Bengal  which  gives  twenty  per  cent,  more 
than  the  local  varieties.  Plant  diseases  have  been 
studied  and  in  some  cases  remedies  found!  New  varie- 
ties have  been  introduced.  Cooperative  credit  societies 
for  purchasing  and  marketing  have  been  organized. 
Twenty-nine  thousand  societies  are  now  active.  When 
we  recall  that  modern  agricultural  science  is  so  recent  in 
America,  what  India  has  done  compares  very  favorably 
with  what  other  countries  have  done,  after  due  allowance 
has  been  made  for  all  the  unusual  difficulties  of  the  situa- 
tion. If  there  is  any  place  for  criticism  of  the  Govern- 
ment it  is  in  the  fact  that  methods  were  not  devised  and 
staff  not  provided  for  the  spreading  among  the  Indian 
farmers  of  the  results  of  laboratory  and  experimental 
research.  Efforts  to  this  end  are  now  being  put  forth 
but  the  area  is  so  vast,  it  takes  so  long  for  a  foreigner 
trained  in  agriculture  to  get  acquainted  with  the  Indian 
conditions;  the  ignorance,  the  suspicion,  the  illiteracy 
and  superstition  of  the  Indian  farmers  so  widespread, 
that  progress  is  necessarily  slow.  The  illiterate  Indian 
farmer  has  for  centuries  been  fair  game  for  anyone  to 
exploit.  It  is  difficult  for  him  to  believe  that  anyone 
is  really  trying  to  help  him.  When  any  improvement  is 
being  introduced  he  always  imagines  that  some  new  trick 
is  being  played  upon  him.  The  Government  is  estab- 
lishing rural,  middle  and  high  agricultural  schools  but 
is  compelled  to  go  slowly  because  of  the  dearth  of  prop- 
erly qualified  teachers  with  the  right  attitude  towards 
the  villager.  It  is  at  this  particular  point  that  America 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  43 

can  be  of  the  greatest  service  to  India.  America  in  the 
South,  among  the  negroes  and  poor  whites,  had  a  prob- 
lem similar  to,  though  not  so  large  as,  that  of  India. 
In  the  Southern  United  States  the  Rockefeller  Founda- 
tion went  in  and  studied  conditions.  It  discovered 
remedies  and  published  the  results  in  the  "General  Edu- 
cation Board's  Report  of  the  Rockefeller  Foundation." 
The  Foundation  was  kind  enough  to  let  me  have  five 
hundred  copies  of  this  valuable  document.  These  were 
distributed  widely  to  Government  officials,  prominent 
Indians  and  missionaries.  Not  a  little  credit  for  the 
wonderful  forward  strides  taken  in  the  last  four  years 
in  India  is  due  to  this  American  literature. 

This  literature  describes  the  functions  of  the  farm 
demonstrator  and  county  adviser.  It  shows  how  these 
trained  men  went  to  the  debt-laden,  hopeless  farmer  of 
the  South  and  showed  him  on  his  own  land,  with  his  own 
labor,  how  to  grow  crops  which  surprised  the  farmer  him- 
self, put  him  out  of  debt  and  brought  new  hope  to  him. 

If  America  can  give  to  India  a  few  missionary  insti- 
tutions like  Hampton  or  Tuskegee,  co-educational,  prop- 
erly staffed  with  enough  adequately  trained  Americans, 
she  will  do  India  an  inestimable  service.  In  such  insti- 
tutions some  Indians  can  be  trained  to  farm  their  own 
land  for  a  much  larger  profit  than  they  now  get  per 
acre,  other  men  can  be  trained  as  demonstrators  to  go 
to  the  debt-laden,  hopeless  and  despondent  Indian 
farmer,  and  further,  the  right  kind  of  teacher  can  be 
trained  for  the  rural  schools.  The  demonstrator  proves 
to  the  cultivator  that  "book  farming"  is  profitable. 
As  a  result  the  farmer  wants  his  children  educated,  and, 
as  a  result  of  his  larger  crops,  he  is  able  to  pay  for  his 
children's  education.  Great  Britain  does  not  have  the 


44  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

conditions  which  call  for  such  institutions.  As  I  go 
about  America  many  say  to  me: — "Yes,  what  you  say 
about  India  is  interesting,  but  after  all  what  business 
have  American  Missions  in  India?  India  is  Great  Bri- 
tain's job."  Frankly  I  admit  that  American  Missions 
have  no  "business"  in  India  and  that  no  legal  claim  can 
be  made  upon  American  Christians  to  send  help  to  India. 
It  is  only  in  the  abundance  of  America's  good-will,  of 
her  resources,  of  her  conspicuous  ability  to  help,  and 
finally  in  her  obedience  to  the  command  of  Christ  to 
go  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  that  justify  her 
in  giving  this  assistance  to  India.  Even  in  my  copy 
of  the  American  revised  version  it  does  not  say  to  Ameri- 
can Christians  "Go  ye  into  all  the  world  except  the 
British  Empire."  India's  need,  America's  ability  to 
meet  that  need  in  relation  to  the  command  of  Christ,  is 
America's  reason  for  sending  of  her  sons  and  daugh- 
ters to  help  this  great  and  ancient  people  to  gain  the 
fullest  measure  of  human  freedom,  and  to  learn  the 
peace  of  God  which  passeth  understanding.  The  reason 
I  advise  that  so  many  properly  qualified  Americans  be 
sent  out  is  not  that  India's  own  sons  and  daughters  are 
not  capable,  but  they  have  not  had  the  chance  for  train- 
ing in  India  which  they  need  and  which  America  has. 
Other  things  being  equal,  the  greater  the  number  of 
American  helpers  as  a  temporary  measure,  the  quicker 
India  will  be  able  to  manage  her  own  affairs. 

After  I  had  made  a  study  of  the  problem  of  mission 
industries  and  saw  they  must  be  an  essential  part  of 
the  missionary  method,  I  decided  to  choose  agriculture 
in  preference  to  anything  else  for  the  following  reasons : 

1.  Agriculture  is  to-day  the  main  occupation  in  India. 
It  is  the  basic  industry  of  the  world. 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  45 

2.  Agriculture  is  likely  to  remain  the  main  occupa- 
tion of  India,  because  of  its  climate  and  the  long  grow- 
ing season. 

3.  Improved  agriculture  is  the  line  of  least  resistance 
in  a  society  bound  by  caste  and  may  be  the  line  of 
greatest  wisdom.     It  is  the  simplest  and  most  direct  way 
to  give  India  enough  to  eat  and  to  prevent  famine. 

4.  Improved  agriculture,  taught  to  the  low-caste  con- 
vert will  give  him  enough  to  eat  and  will  provide  him 
with  a  surplus  with  which  he  can  purchase  clothing, 
pay  the   doctor,   educate   his   children   and   contribute 
reasonably  to  the  support  of  his  religion.     He  learns 
by  his  own  efforts  how  to  support  himself  and  his  family. 

5.  Improved  agriculture  provides  an  occupation  for 
sons  of  Christians  who  are  not  fitted   to   be  mission 
teachers   or   preachers.     Hitherto  the  main   efforts   of 
mission  training  have  been  directed  toward  the  keep- 
ing up  of  the  supply  of  evangelists  and  teachers.    Not 
all  good  Christians  are  called  of  God  to  these  forms  of 
service.     Since  mission  service  is  a  form  of  life  insur- 
ance for  the  time  server,  many  have  entered  into  this 
form  of  Christian  work  who  were  not  suited  either  by 
their    aptitude    or   their    consecration    to    teaching   or 
preaching.     Because  there  was  no  other  form  of  train- 
ing provided  by  the  mission  a  class  of  professional  re- 
ligionists has  been  fostered  who  are  not  always  a  credit 
to  their  mission  or  to  Christianity.     The  boy  who  is 
trained  in  agriculture  has  no  difficulty  in  obtaining  a 
good  job  apart  from  the  mission,  often  at  a  salary  much 
higher  than  the  mission  could  afford  to  pay.     We  have 
had  men,  trained  on  the  farm  at  Allahabad,  who  delib- 
erately chose  mission  service  at  a  lower  rate  of  pay, 
rather  than  other  employment  at  a  higher  salary  be- 


46  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

cause  they  felt  that  in  the  mission  they  might  help  their 
own  people  better  than  by  earning  a  big  salary  for  them- 
selves elsewhere.  This  raises  the  Indian  to  the  same 
status  as  the  missionary  himself,  who  serves  not  for 
what  he  can  get  but  for  what  he  can  give  to  others. 
This  opens  another  possible  occupation  for  Indian  Chris- 
tians and  the  more  of  such  properly  trained  men  there 
are,  the  sooner  will  the  Indian  be  the  real  leader  of  his 
own  people  in  their  long  struggle  out  of  economic 
bondage  into  economic  freedom. 

6.  The  fact  that  so  few  low-caste  folk  possess  land 
has  been  used  as  an  argument  against  mission  agricul- 
tural training.     What  is  the  good,  our  critics  ask,  of 
training  men  in  this  profession  when  they  have  no  land 
of  their  own  or  are  unable  to  rent  land  ?     The  answer  is, 
that  even  illiterate  low-caste  non-Christians,  who  have 
worked  on  the  mission  farm  for  two  or  three  years  and 
who  have  learned  how  to  use  iron  plows,  harrows,  rollers, 
seeding,  mowing  and  threshing  machinery  and  silage 
cutters,  are  in  great  demand  at  wages  two  and  one-half 
times  as  great  as  the  average  village  wage.     We  have 
never  had  difficulty  in  getting  eager  laborers  who  wish 
to  improve   their  own   condition  by  getting  practical 
training  with  us  which  fits  them  for  higher  wages  else- 
where. 

7.  When  I  first  came  into  contact  with  the  non-Chris- 
tian student  of  an  Indian  college,  I  was  interested  to  find 
out  what  he  was  going  to  do  with  his  education.     I  dis- 
covered that  a  very  large  majority  were  looking  forward 
to  Government  service.     In  fact  for  every  Government 
post  which  fell  vacant  about  a  hundred  students  applied. 
The  ninety  and  nine  who  failed  to  obtain  the  post  fed 
the  ranks  of  the  embittered  and  made  Indian  unrest  more 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  47 

widespread.  They  asked,  "Why  did  the  Government 
accept  our  fees  for  educating  us  and  then  not  give  us 
jobs?" 

Failing  Government  services,  the  law  is  their  second 
choice,  and  India,  though  possessed  of  some  good,  great, 
constructive  and  clever  lawyers,  has  far  more  men  in 
this  profession  than  the  country  needs.  If  they  fail  in 
law,  things  have  come  to  a  bad  pass,  and  there  is  nothing 
left  but  teaching  in  a  Government  school,  or  failing  this, 
in  a  mission  school,  or  a  clerkship  on  the  railroad  or  in 
a  mercantile  house.  But  in  any  one  of  these  occupa- 
tions life  can  never  have  the  glory  and  honor  it  would 
have  had  in  Government  service. 

Only  a  small  minority  go  out  into  life  looking  for  re- 
sponsibility or  for  public  service  or  to  see  how  much 
good  they  can  do. 

There  are  a  few  who  do  not  feel  like  accepting  any 
post  under  Government  since  in  such  a  position  they 
would  be  prevented  from  criticizing  its  policy  or  ques- 
tioning its  action  in  any  way.  They  prefer  their  inde- 
pendence and  poverty  to  a  post  in  a  Government  "ma- 
chine" where  there  is  the  assurance  of  a  fair  salary, 
leading  to  a  comfortable  old  age  with  a  good  pension. 
The  number  of  occupations  open  to  educated  Indians 
which  allow  them  to  preserve  their  independence  are 
very  few. 

In  choosing  agriculture  I  felt  that  a  training  in  it 
would  give  the  educated  non-Christian  Indian  opportu- 
nity to  earn  a  decent  livelihood,  and  to  keep  his  own  in- 
dependence and  self-respect.  If  a  large  body  of  such 
men  could  be  created  in  India  to-day  they  would  be  of 
great  assistance  both  to  the  Government  and  the  people. 
As  a  class  they  would  not  be  so  bitter  as  the  present  dis- 


48  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

appointed  candidates  for  Government  service,  nor  so 
pliant  and  servile  as  some  of  the  successful  so  often  are. 
They  could  be  of  great  service  in  providing  an  educated 
Indian  public  opinion  free  from  prejudice. 

8.  There  is  a  great  call  to-day  for  more  technical  and 
industrial  education  in  India.  Some  urge  the  Govern- 
ment to  press  on  with  this  to  the  exclusion  of  all  else. 
The  patriotic  Indian  does  not  like  to  see  India  so  de- 
pendent upon  other  countries  for  the  very  simplest 
manufactured  necessities  such  as  matches,  lamps  and 
tools.  He  wants  the  Government  to  subsidize  in  some 
way  all  Indian  manufacturers.  One  great  reason 
against  this,  is  that  India  to-day  has  so  small  a  propor- 
tion of  her  population  that  can  use  tools  and  manage 
machines,  the  lack  of  trained  machinists  could  not  be 
overcome  for  years.  I  would  be  the  first  to  agree  that 
India  needs  a  greater  proportion  of  her  people  engaged 
in  manufacture  and  industry  and  fewer  in  agriculture. 
I  feel  that  this  can  best  be  brought  about  by  the  devel- 
opment of  those  industries  related  to  and  subsidiary  to 
agriculture  such  as : 

The  making  and  repairing  of  modern  farm  imple- 
ments and  machinery. 

Modern  dairying. 

The  canning,  and  preserving,  and  drying  of  fruits 
and  vegetables. 

Sugar  making. 

Oil  pressing. 

Tanning. 

Rope  making. 

To  illustrate  how  improved  agriculture  helps  the  in- 
dustries I  speak  of,  on  the  land  of  the  mission  farm 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  49 

where,  before  we  took  it,  one  blacksmith  and  one  car- 
penter were  occupied  for  less  than  half  their  time,  after 
the  mission  took  it  and  introduced  labor-saving  machin- 
ery, two  blacksmiths  and  two  carpenters  have  steady 
work  all  the  time,  keeping  our  machines  in  working  or- 
der, and  setting  up  new  machinery  for  purchasers. 

The  limiting  factor  to-day  to  the  introduction  of  mod- 
ern, efficient,  labor-saving  farm  machinery  into  India  is 
not  money,  but  lack  of  men  trained  to  use  modern  farm 
tools  and  to  keep  them  in  repair.  India  has  several 
million  wells  in  areas  where  there  never  can  be  flow 
irrigation.  At  present  the  water  is  raised  by  bullocks,  a 
slow  and  expensive  method.  The  engineer  who  can 
overcome  all  the  difficulties  and  give  to  India  a  cheap, 
durable,  efficient  and  simple  well-pumping  outfit  will  do 
a  great  thing  for  India.  We  therefore  wish  to  establish 
a  strong  agricultural  engineering  department  to  remedy 
this  obvious  lack. 

9.  The  present  system  of  rural  and  primary  educa- 
tion is  not  popular  in  India  largely  because  it  is  not 
vocational  or  "dollar"  education,  it  is  too  literal,  too 
detached  and  unrelated  to  the  life  of  the  people,  but 
even  more  so  because  the  boy  who  succeeds  in  it  is  lost 
to  his  village  and  to  his  own  people.  If  he  succeeds  he 
is  drawn  away  to  the  cities.  India  is  a  land  of  peculiar 
rural  type.  Over  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  population  live 
in  small  villages  and  less  than  ten  per  cent,  in  cities  and 
towns.  The  large  cities  of  India,  for  a  country  with 
such  a  teeming  population  are  very  few. 

Calcutta   1,200,000  inhabitants  approximate 

Bombay  1,100,000  inhabitants  approximate 

Madras 500,000  inhabitants  approximate 


50  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 


Lahore   . . 
Delhi    . . . 

Agra   

Lucknow 
Allahabad 
Poona     . . 
Benares    . 


from     200,000  to  400,000 


Including  these  cities  there  are  only  seventy-five  towns 
and  cities  with  over  fifty  thousand  population  each. 
Men  trained  as  farmers  will  do  their  work  and  earn 
their  living  among  their  own  people  in  the  villages. 
Each  properly  trained  farmer  will  be  as  a  light  on  a 
hill  to  all  the  ordinary  village  farmers.  He  will  use  and 
introduce  the  better  seed,  methods  and  implements. 
When  his  neighbors  see  the  better  yields  his  practices 
will  be  noted  and  copied  by  them.  This  will  raise  the 
yield  of  the  crops  and  the  standard  of  living  for  all.  I 
believe  this  is  the  quickest  way  to  reach  the  whole  of 
India  helpfully,  naturally  and  economically. 

10.  India  needs  roads,  railroads,  canals,  schools,  col- 
leges, libraries,  and  hospitals.  Sixty-two  per  cent,  of 
the  people  of  India  are  beyond  the  reach  of  any  medical 
aid  whatsoever.  India  is  so  poor  that  she  cannot  in  her 
present  condition  provide  the  capital  for  a  large  part, 
much  less,  for  all  of  these  things.  Such  blessings  are  not 
going  to  be  given  to  her  as  an  act  of  charity  by  any  other 
people.  If  she  ever  gets  them  it  will  be  by  her  own  ef- 
forts. The  only  possible  place  that  I  can  see  that  she 
can  get  them  is  from  the  first  foot  of  her  own  soil,  prop- 
erly tilled.  By  the  present  old  fashioned  and  inefficient 
methods,  India  out  of  one  of  the  richest  soils  on  the  earth 
has  the  smallest  yield  per  acre  or  per  man  of  any  civil- 
ized country.  So  the  rapid  introduction  of  better  farm- 
ing is  the  most  natural  and  easy  method  of  giving  to 


MISSION  INDUSTRIES  51 

India  the  things  of  which  she  stands  so  sorely  in  need. 
This  is  the  one  sure  way  to  rid  India  of  the  ever  present 
nightmare,  as  well  as  the  reality,  of  famine,  and  from 
the  missionary  standpoint  the  one  sure  way  to  get  the 
self-supporting,  self-propagating,  self-governing  church. 
Better  farming  for  India  means  the  introduction  of 
modern  machinery  adapted  to  Indian  conditions.  The 
Indian  farmer  has  gone  about  as  far  as  any  one  can  go 
with  implements  made  of  bamboo  tied  together  with  weak 
string;  to  get  bigger  crops  he  must  have  better  tools. 
The  present  tools  and  implements  do  not  call  out  from 
the  user  any  large  degree  of  intelligence.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  mission  farms  using  Indian  tools  and  meth- 
ods have  not  made  any  substantial  progress.  But  the 
Indian  boy  who  learns  to  care  for  a  tractor,  or  a  thresh- 
ing machine,  or  a  silage  cutter,  knows  he  has  learned 
something  that  calls  for  more  brains  and  effort.  Modern 
machinery  challenges  the  Indian  farmer  boy  just  as  it 
has  the  American  farmer  boy. 


"Give  ye  ear,  and  hear  my  voice ;  hearken,  and  hear  my  speech. 
Doth  he  that  ploweth  to  sow  plow  continually?  doth  he  con- 
tinually open  and  harrow  his  ground  ?  When  he  hath  levelled 
the  face  thereof,  doth  he  not  cast  abroad  the  fitches,  and 
scatter  the  cummin,  and  put  in  the  wheat  in  rows,  and  the 
harley  in  the  appointed  place,  and  the  spelt  in  the  border 
thereof?  For  his  God  doth  instruct  him  aright,  and  doth 
teach  him.  For  the  fitches  are  not  threshed  with  a  sharp 
threshing  instrument,  neither  is  a  cart  wheel  turned  about 
upon  the  cummin;  but  the  fitches  are  beaten  out  with  a  staff, 
and  the  cummin  with  a  rod.  Bread  grain  is  ground;  for 
he  will  not  be  always  threshing  it:  and  though  the  wheel  of 
his  cart  and  his  horses  scatter  it,  he  doth  not  grind  it.  Thia 
also  cometh  forth  from  Jehovah  of  hosts,  who  is  wonderful 
in  counsel,  and  excellent  in  wisdom." 

Isaiah  28:  23-29.    Am.  R.  V. 


CHAPTER  V 

HOW   THE  FARM    STARTED 

In  going  into  these  mud  villages  one  not  only  learned 
that  India  was  poor  beyond  compare,  "cabined,  cribbed, 
confined"  by  caste,  and  illiterate  to  an  appalling  ex- 
tent ;  but  also  that  India  was  a  land  where  one  occupa- 
tion overshadowed  all  others.  That  occupation  was 
farming.  The  census  figures  give  sixty-five  per  cent, 
engaged  in  agriculture  proper,  and  fifteen  per  cent,  in 
looking  after  cattle,  working  in  forests  or  in  working  as 
casual  landless  laborers  on  the  farms  of  India.  Thus 
eighty  per  cent,  of  the  population  of  India  gets  its  living 
from  the  soil.  India  will  remain  predominately  agri- 
cultural largely  because  of  the  climate. 

For  the  four  months  from  November  to  March  North- 
ern India  where  Allahabad  is  located  has  a  delightful 
climate,  sunny  days,  starlit  nights,  little  or  no  rain,  the 
thermometer  occasionally  registering  frost  at  night  and 
rarely  rising  beyond  90°  F.  at  noon.  This  is  the  season 
when  there  is  a  riot  of  flowers ;  roses,  violets,  heliotrope, 
chrysanthemums,  pansies,  oleanders,  poinsettias  and 
many  others  add  color  and  odor  that  enrapture  the  lover 
of  a  good  garden.  The  best  American  vegetable  seeds 
give  results  of  a  kind  that  is  rarely  attained  in  America. 
March  is  a  month  of  transition.  In  April  the  weather 

52 


HOW  THE  FARM  STARTED  53 

begins  to  warm  up,  May  and  June  are  called  the  "hot 
weather"  months  and  have  a  shade  temperature  from 
105°  to  118°  F.,  sun  temperatures  from  160°  to  180°  F. 
There  is  a  hot  wind  from  the  west  known  as  the  ' '  Loo. ' ' 
It  is  dangerous  to  be  out  of  doors  in  the  "Loo."  The 
Indian  is  afraid  of  it,  many  die  from  its  effects.  About 
July  first  the  "monsoon  bursts"  or  "the  rains  break" 
and  Allahabad  is  due  to  receive  forty  inches  of  rain  in 
the  following  three  months.  The  rain  seldom  comes  in 
gentle  well-timed  showers,  but  often  in  a  series  of  cloud 
bursts.  On  August  9th,  1919,  fourteen  inches  fell  in 
eight  hours  at  Sutna  which  is  about  a  hundred  miles 
south  of  Allahabad.  On  August  13th,  1919,  an  area  of 
over  forty  thousand  square  miles  in  extent  received  over 
four  inches  in  twenty-four  hours.  On  July  9th,  1920, 
Allahabad  had  eight  and  twenty-four  hundredths  inches 
of  rain.  I  have  measured  on  our  farm  a  fall  of  four  and 
a  half  inches  in  forty-five  minutes.  All  roads,  bridges, 
culverts,  railway  enbankments  have  to  be  built  with  such 
abnormal  rainfall  in  mind.  Between  these  heavy  down- 
pours we  are  apt  to  have  "breaks"  in  the  rains.  Sev- 
eral days  perhaps,  sometimes  several  weeks,  as  in  1918, 
may  pass  without  a  drop  of  rain  falling.  The  air  is 
often  saturated  to  such  an  extent  that  linen  after  ab- 
sorbing moisture  from  the  air  can  be  wrung  out  as 
though  it  had  been  dipped  in  water.  Humidity  at  Al- 
lahabad : 

1920 

July    9th  10th  llth 

96  93  98 

Saturation  100 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 


COLD  WEATHER  CHART.    I 
THE  WEATHEB 

METEOROLOGICAL  OBSEBVATIONS 
Recorded  at  Allahabad 


Week  Ending 

Jan.   28,  1920 

22nd 

23rd 

24th 

25th 

26th 

27th 

28th 

Barometer    re- 

duced to  32°P. 

29.863 

29.807 

29.824 

29.788 

29.780 

29.806 

29.645 

Temperature     o  f 

51.5 

51.5 

51.4 

54.5 

55.7 

55.3 

51.2 

Humidity     (satu- 

ration =   100) 

72 

83 

83 

83 

67 

53 

55 

Wind    direction.. 

CALM 

CALM 

CALM 

CALM 

W. 

WSW. 

W. 

Maximum  temper- 

ature in  shade 

75.2 

76.5 

76.5 

80.2 

81.0 

79.2 

74.2 

Minimum  temper- 

ature in  shade 

43.4 

44.5 

47.6 

48.5 

49.9 

47.4 

42.9 

Mean      tempera- 

ture of  the  day 

59.3 

60.5 

62.0 

64.3 

65.4 

63.3 

58.5 

Normal    tempera- 

ture of  the  day 

60.7 

60.8 

60.8 

60.6 

60.9 

60.7 

60.7 

Rain    

0 

0 

0 

0 

o 

o 

0 

Total    rain    from 

1st  January  .  . 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

0 

Normal    total    up 

to  date  .  . 

0.48 

0.52 

0.57 

0.62 

0.66 

0.68 

0.70 

N.  B. — The   normal   temperature   and   rainfall   of   each    day    are  derived 
from  the  observations  of  28  years,  1870—98. 

Quoted  from  the  Pioneer  IfaH,  January  30,  1920. 


TYPICAL  HOT  WEATHER  CHART.     II 

THE  WEATHER 

METEOROLOGICAL  OBSERVATIONS 
Recorded  at  Allahabad 


Week  Ending 

June  9,   1920 

3rd 

4th 

5th 

6th 

7th 

8th 

9th 

Barometer    re- 

duced to  32°F. 

29.329 

29.331 

29.302 

29.257 

29.237 

29.244 

29.232 

Temperature     o  f 

the   air  

94.0 

96.7 

93.7 

90.3 

95.5 

94.0 

93.4 

Humidity     (satu- 

ration =  100) 

36 

32 

37 

39 

35 

48 

51 

Wind    direction.  . 

WSW. 

W. 

CALM 

W. 

CALM 

E.N.E. 

E. 

HOW  THE  FARM  STARTED 


55 


Maximum  temper- 

ature in  shade 

108.4 

108.0 

109.9 

112.3 

107.6 

113.5 

113.7 

Minimum  temper- 

ature in  shade 

81.2 

81.5 

83.5 

86.9 

83.5 

86.2 

87.2 

Mean      tempera- 

ture of  the  day 

94.8 

94.7 

96.7 

99.6 

99.5 

99.8 

100.4 

Normal    tempera- 

ture of  the  day 

94.3 

94.5 

94.1 

93.6 

93.5 

94.0 

93.8 

Rain   

0 

0 

0 

0 

o 

0 

0 

Total    rain    from 

1st  January  .  . 

1.33 

1.33 

1.33 

1.33 

1.33 

1.33 

1.83 

Normal    total    up 
to  date  .  . 

2.08 

2.12 

2.18 

2.24 

2.36 

2.66 

2.44 

N.  B. — The  normal  temperature  and  rainfall  of  each  day  are  derived  from 
the  observations  of  28  years,  1870—98. 

This  shows  1.33  inches  of  rain  in  six  months. 

The  maximum  sun  temperature  would  be  160°-1800. 

Quoted  from  the  Pioneer  MaM,  June  11,  1920. 


RAINS 


Week  Ending 

July  14,   1920 

8th 

9th 

10th 

llth 

12th 

13th 

14th 

Barometer    re- 

duced to  32°F. 

29.212 

29.196 

29.204 

29.170 

29.148 

29.199 

29.181 

Temperature     o  f 

the  air  

83.6 

80.7 

80.4 

79.0 

82.0 

80.3 

80.4 

Humidity     (satu- 

ration =  100) 

81 

96 

93 

98 

93 

95 

.93 

Wind    direction  . 

ENE. 

CALM 

wsw. 

NNW. 

ENE. 

WSW. 

W. 

Maximum  temper- 

ature in  shade 

94.9 

94.0 

89.0 

83.2 

83.4 

87.6 

86.4 

Minimum  temper- 

ature in  shade 

80.0 

78.3 

80.0 

78.4 

78.6 

78.8 

77.8 

Mean      tempera- 

ture of  the  day 

87.4 

86.1 

84.5 

80.8 

81.0 

83.2 

82.1 

Normal    tempera- 

ture of  the  day 

85.3 

85.2 

85.2 

85.3 

85.3 

85.4 

85.3 

Rain     

0 

8.24 

0.11 

1.54 

1.87 

0.33 

0.26 

Total    rain    from 

1st  January  .  . 

2.98 

11.22 

11.33 

12.87 

14.74 

15.07 

15.33 

Normal    total    up 
to  date  .  . 

10.73 

11.07 

11.39 

11.68 

11.94 

12.16 

12.43 

N.  B. — The  normal  temperature  and  rainfall  of  each  day  are  derived  from 
the  observations  of  28  years,  1870-98. 

Quoted  from  the  Pioneer  Mail  of  July  16,  1920. 


56  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

A  moldy  Bible  or  moldy  pair  of  shoes  during  this  season 
is  no  particular  discredit  to  their  owner.  The  humidity 
is  very  favorable  to  the  growth  of  molds  of  every  kind. 
This  also  is  the  season  of  prickly  heat  and  boils,  both 
of  which  need  strong  counter-irritants  in  order  that  the 
mind  may  be  diverted  from  them.  During  the  hot  sea- 
son and  the  rainy  season  the  effort  to  keep  alive  absorbs 
most  of  one's  energies.  Under  such  conditions,  which, 
with  some  variations,  are  common  to  the  "plains"  of 
India,  mill  and  factory  life  with  their  regular  hours, 
hard,  confining  work,  have  little  attraction  for  the 
Indian.  Every  large  non-agricultural  industry  in  India 
has  great  difficulty  in  obtaining  an  adequate  supply  of 
labor.  Until  the  general  standard  of  living  be  raised 
an  increase  in  wages  may  result  only  in  the  workman 
working  fewer  days  in  the  month.  Increase  of  money 
is  not  so  necessary  as  a  "divine  discontent"  with  his 
present  standard.  An  increase  of  desire  must  precede 
any  rise  in  the  standard  of  living. 

Not  only  is  the  climate  against  mill  and  factory  life 
but  the  fact  that  in  India  the  growing  season  for  crops 
lasts  for  twelve  months  as  against  six  months  per  year  in 
the  northern  United  States  also  favors  Indian  farming. 
In  late  October  and  early  November  wheat,  barley,  peas, 
mustard,  linseed,  potatoes  and  vegetables  are  sown. 
These  crops  are  reaped  normally  before  April  10th. 
Sugar  cane  is  sown  from  January  to  March,  reaped  and 
crushed  from  December  to  March,  cotton  sown  from 
March  to  July  is  picked  from  August  to  December.  The 
fodder  crops,  which  include  sorghums,  millets,  maize, 
and  pigeon  peas  and  the  seeds  of  the  castor  oil  plant  and 
the  plant  family  which  includes  watermelons,  cucum- 
bers, and  squash  are  sown  with  the  coming  of  the  rains 


HOW  THE  FARM  STARTED  57 

and  the  produce  is  gathered  or  reaped  from  October  to 
May.  So  wherever  there  is  irrigation  there  can  be  a 
very  fair  distribution  of  agricultural  labor  over  the 
whole  year.  In  spite  of  the  great  variety  of  staple 
crops  the  yields  per  acre  and  per  man  in  India  are  lower 
than  in  any  other  civilized  country.  Rothampstead  in 
England  is  the  mother  of  agricultural  experiment  sta- 
tions. On  one  plot  for  over  seventy  years  without 
manure  wheat  has  been  grown  continually  year  after 
year.  The  average  yield  per  acre  of  wheat  for  the  whole 
of  India  is  less  than  the  famous  unmanured  plot,  wheat 
after  wheat,  at  Rothampstead.  On  comparing  the  large 
and  profitable  yields  of  crops  in  the  jail  with  the  piti- 
fully small  yields  of  the  villagers'  plots,  I  approached 
certain  government  officials  and  missionary  bodies  and 
said:  "In  view  of  the  present  condition  in  India  and 
the  great  need  for  more  food  and  education,  surely,  if 
Government  and  missions  are  justified  in  carrying  on 
any  kind  of  education,  they  are  justified  in  establishing 
that  kind  of  education  which  most  directly  meets  the 
needs  of  the  great  majority  of  the  people  of  India." 
For  a  time  no  one  would  pay  any  attention,  but  I  still 
continued  to  gather  facts  and  figures  and  to  present 
them  to  my  friends.  Every  kind  of  objection  was  urged 
in  favor  of  the  status  quo ;  the  fact  that  Indian  civiliza- 
tion was  already  old  when  our  own  ancestors  were  still 
barbaric  savages ;  the  fact  that  every  possible  or  conceiv- 
able contingency  in  the  Indian  agricultural  year  was 
treated  of  in  a  beautiful  rhyming  Sanskrit  couplet  did 
not  impress  me,  when  I  compared  the  poor  Indian 
villager  who  seldom  had  enough  to  eat  and  the  people  of 
my  own  country,  who,  lacking  the  ancient  civilization 
and  the  Sanskrit  couplets,  still  had  enough  and  to  spare. 


58      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

Finally  the  Mission  authorities  said:  "Well,  if  you 
think  we  ought  to  be  teaching  scientific,  modern  farm- 
ing, as  a  missionary  method,  why  do  you  not  return  to 
America  and  study  the  subject  and  see  if  the  folk  in 
America  will  back  your  faith  with  their  money?"  In 
March,  1909, 1  left  Allahabad  and  went  to  the  Ohio  State 
University  to  study  agriculture.  For  the  next  two 
years,  in  addition  to  studying  in  the  University,  I  made 
on  the  average  of  thirty  missionary  addresses  each 
month,  in  churches,  schools,  colleges,  theological  semi- 
naries, clubs.  Sometimes  the  response  was  touching. 
After  the  Laymen's  Missionary  meeting  in  the  great 
auditorium  of  Chicago,  a  scene  shifter,  all  grimy  and  in 
his  shirt  sleeves,  pressed  a  soiled  ten  dollar  bill  in  my 
hand,  saying,  ''Take  this  and  use  it  for  me  over  there." 
Some  of  the  boys  at  one  of  the  reformatories  gave  all 
their  savings.  A  little  two  dollar  and  a  half  gold  piece 
was  given  me  by  an  aged  lady  in  Staunton,  Virginia,  the 
birthplace  of  President  Wilson.  It  had  been  presented 
to  her  by  her  lover  who  was  killed  in  the  Civil  War,  and 
was  all  she  had  left  to  remind  her  of  him.  Another 
woman  from  the  Pacific  Coast  sent  me  a  five  dollar  gold 
piece,  the  first  earnings  of  her  son  who  had  recently  died 
of  tuberculosis.  Some  large  gifts  came  also,  but  most 
were  in  sums  under  ten  dollars. 

There  was  also  a  response  in  the  dedication  of  life. 
I  have  shaken  hands  in  India  with  five  women  mission- 
aries who  had  attended  my  first  mission  study  class  on 
India  at  the  Lake  Geneva  Student  Conference  in  1909. 
It  was  a  great  privilege  to  cooperate  with  the  Student 
Volunteer  Movement  in  recruiting  for  the  foreign  field. 
Many  nights  each  month  were  spent  on  sleeping  cars, 
and  by  overnight  journeys  from  Columbus  I  spoke  in 


HOW  THE  FARM  STARTED  59 

such  centers  as  Washington,  New  York,  Chicago,  Roches- 
ter, Philadelphia,  Cleveland  and  Cincinnati.  It  was 
hard,  exhausting  work,  especially  as  for  nine  months  I 
suffered  with  severe  attacks  of  malaria  brought  with  me 
from  India.  But,  the  thought  of  the  need  of  the  India 
that  I  loved,  to  which  God  had  called  me,  gave  me  a 
strength  beyond  my  own. 

I  was  graduated  B.  Sc.  in  Agriculture  in  June,  1911, 
and  returned  to  India  in  October,  1911,  with  thirty  thou- 
sand dollars  of  real  money  given  by  friends  who  believed 
in  this  form  of  evangel.  With  the  thirty  thousand  dol- 
lars given  by  friends  in  America,  two  hundred  and 
seventy-five  acres  of  land  in  one  solid  block  were  pur- 
chased for  about  eleven  thousand  dollars.  In  order  to 
secure  this  land  for  an  agricultural  college  it  was  neces- 
sary to  appeal  to  the  government  to  put  the  Land  Ac- 
quisition Act  into  force.  This  it  was  kind  enough  to 
do  to  secure  the  land,  but  the  Mission  paid  for  it.  The 
old  Jumna  Mission  compound,  which  has  been  in  posses- 
sion of  the  Mission  since  before  the  mutiny,  contains  the 
Ewing  Christian  College  and  the  boys'  high  school.  It 
occupies  a  beautiful  site  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Jumna 
river,  having  about  one-third  of  a  mile  of  river  frontage. 
The  Jumna  river  at  Allahabad  varies  in  width  from  a 
half  mile  during  the  cold  season  to  about  a  mile  during 
the  rains.  The  college  campus  goes  right  up  to  the  two 
story  bridge  which  carries  the  main  line  of  the  East  In- 
dian Railway  on  the  upper  story  with  a  cart  track 
underneath  the  railway.  Across  the  bridge  and  imme- 
diately opposite  the  college  campus  is  the  Mission  farm. 
This  gives  a  most  desirable  and  beautiful  location  for  a 
college  campus  and  agricultural  institution.  The  land 
selected  for  the  farm  was  rough,  and  very  badly  eroded 


60  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

and  cut  up  into  gullies.     There  were  a  great  many  small, 
irregular  shaped  fields.    The  land,  having  been  deposited 
by  the  river  in  flood  time,  consists  of  nearly  every  kind 
of  soil  found  in  Northern  and  Central  India,  ranging 
from  nearly  pure  sand  through  the  loams  to  the  clays 
and  some  patches  of  the  characteristic  "black  cotton" 
soil  of  Central  India.     A  good  deal  of  this  land  had  not 
been  plowed  within  the  memory  of  man.     It  was  very 
badly  infested  with  two  grasses  both  of  which  have  un- 
derground stems.    When  this  land  was  plowed  with  the 
little  Indian  plow  it  cut  across  these  underground  stems 
and  every  place  the  plow  broke  the  underground  stems 
a  new  clump  of  grass  came  up  so  quickly  that  no  seed 
that  the  Indian  farmer  could  sow  could  get  a  sufficient 
start  to  keep  ahead  of  these  grasses.     The  grass  would 
choke  out  anything  planted  in  it.     The  Indian  cultivator 
cannot  plow  this  land  except  under  the  most  favorable 
conditions.     During   the   dry   season   of  the   year  the 
ground  is  so  hard  that  his  little  plow  will  not  get  in 
to  break  it  so  he  has  to  wait  until  the  rains  have  suffi- 
ciently softened  it  to  enable  his  little  plow  to  scratch  the 
surface.     In  1912  when  I  was  down  with  typhoid  fever 
my  colleagues  tried  to  rent  some  of  this  land  to  the  farm- 
ers, but  they  would  not  give  eight  cents  an  acre  for 
some  of  it.     I  knew  that  this  land  was  very  poor  and 
difficult  to  cultivate.     That  was  one  of  the  reasons  that 
I  chose  it.     If  I  had  chosen  a  good  piece  of  rich,  level 
land,  irrigated  from  the  canal,  the  Indian  farmer  would 
have  said  that  anybody  could  farm  and  get  a  living  on 
good  land  like  that.     I  chose  this  poor  land,  eroded  and 
full  of  pest  plants  difficult  to  eradicate,  in  order  to  show 
that  the  millions  of  acres  of  such  land  in  Northern  India 
could  be  redeemed  and  made  profitable.     Another  reason 


HOW  THE  FARM  STARTED  61 

for  choosing  this  land  was  its  location,  so  near  the  college 
and  the  city.  Allahabad  is  the  capital  of  the  United 
Provinces  which  have  a  population  of  about  fifty  mil- 
lions. At  some  time  or  other  the  leaders  of  these  Prov- 
inces come  to  the  capital  city.  The  farm  being  on  the 
river  bank,  overlooked  by  the  railway,  and  having  two 
of  the  main  roads  into  Allahabad  pass  by  it,  is  .in  a 
commanding  position  for  a  demonstration  farm.  Being 
so  near  the  city  provided  a  market  for  the  dairy  products 
and  surplus  vegetables.  Furthermore,  during  the  Hindu 
month,  Magh,  from  the  middle  of  our  January  to  the 
middle  of  February,  Allahabad  is  the  greatest  pilgrim 
center  on  earth.  On  some  of  the  big  days  of  the  Mela, 
crowds  of  from  two  to  four  million  pilgrims  gather  to 
bathe  in  the  sacred  waters  of  the  two  rivers  which  are 
seen,  the  Ganges  and  the  Jumna,  and  the  river  Saraswati, 
the  river  that  can  only  be  seen  by  the  eye  of  faith,  that 
is  said  to  flow  underground  for  hundreds  of  miles  and 
joins  the  sacred  Ganges  at  this  hallowed  spot.  Where 
these  three  sacred  waters  unite  great  benefit  is  supposed 
to  accrue  to  the  one  bathing  under  the  right  auspices 
during  this  month,  Magh.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of 
these  pilgrims  each  year  walk  past  the  Mission  farm. 
Many  stop  to  see  our  improved  tools  and  implements, 
our  sleek,  well-fed  cattle,  our  silos  and  sanitary  barns. 
They  carry  the  tidings  to  the  most  remote  parts  of  the 
Indian  Empire.  We  get  many  inquiries  about  the  pur- 
chase of  machinery  from  far  away  places  where  these 
pilgrims  have  told  of  what  they  have  seen. 

I  have  said  that  this  land  was  badly  infested  with 
weeds,  thorns  and  grasses.  The  Indian  tools  and  imple- 
ments could  not  eradicate  them,  but  we,  with  our  Ameri- 
can Titan  tractor  with  three  American  plows  behind  it, 


62  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

or  a  Spaulding  deep-tilling  tool,  drawn  by  six  pairs  of 
oxen,  could  go  into  these  fields  when  they  were  hard  and 
dry  and  thoroughly  open  them  up,  destroy  the  hard  pan, 
the  impervious  layer,  just  below  where  the  Indian  plow 
could  reach.  When  the  land  was  thus  plowed,  the  hot, 
scorching  sun  dried  out  all  the  stems  and  roots  of  the 
grasses  which  had  been  turned  up  and  these  when  dead 
improved  the  soil.  Being  possessed  of  implements  which 
could  master  it  we  succeeded  in  cleaning  the  land  by 
this  deep  hot-weather  plowing.  We  are  raising  large 
fodder  crops,  and  grain  and  oil  seeds  on  land  which  eight 
years  ago  would  not  rent  for  eight  cents  per  acre.  The 
farmers  that  refused  eight  cents  eight  years  ago  offered 
last  year,  1919,  seven  dollars  per  acre  rent  for  the  same 
land,  because  they  said  we  had  so  cleaned  it  and  increased 
its  fertility  that  it  would  produce  crops  enough  to  pay 
the  big  rental.  Improved  implements  are  a  necessity 
if  the  yield  of  crops  in  India  is  to  be  increased. 

My  colleague,  Mr.  Bembower,  has  laid  out  vegetable 
gardens  and  orchards  of  mango,  orange  and  guava. 

After  purchasing  the  land  the  rest  of  the  thirty  thou- 
sand dollars  was  spent  in  building  one  six-room  bunga- 
low; building  a  cattle  shed  two  hundred  and  forty  feet 
long  by  twenty-four  feet  wide;  in  putting  in  under- 
ground silos,  building  a  store  room  and  shed  for  tools, 
implements  and  grains,  in  purchasing  dairy  cattle  and 
work  oxen,  a  flock  of  sheep  and  goats,  buying  wire  fenc- 
ing, putting  in  roads  and  paths,  improving  our  wells  so 
that  we  were  sure  of  an  abundant  supply  of  water  for  the 
cattle  and  the  people.  A  number  of  implement  makers 
in  America  gave  us  tools.  In  most  cases  these  have  led 
to  business  from  Indians  who  have  seen  the  things  work- 
ing on  the  Mission  farm.  The  thirty  thousand  dollars, 


HOW  THE  FARM  STARTED  63 

however,  was  all  spent  before  we  had  any  dormitory, 
class-room  or  laboratory  accommodations.  We  urgently 
need  a  laboratory  and  houses  for  our  teachers.  The 
first  students  who  came  to  us  were  poor  Christian  boys. 
My  wife  gave  the  back  verandah  of  the  six-room  bunga- 
low and  part  of  the  dining-room  for  a  dairy.  I  filled  the 
guest-chamber  with  our  good  seed  and  used  the  front 
verandah  as  our  recitation  room.  The  students  slept  out 
when  the  weather  permitted,  and  when  it  did  not,  they 
went  in  under  the  cattle  shed  or  the  machinery  store 
room.  I  was  very  glad  indeed  to  receive  from  Mrs. 
McCormick,  of  Chicago,  five  thousand  dollars  to  build  the 
first  wing  of  a  dormitory.  The  very  day  on  which  Sir 
James  Meston  (now  Lord  Meston),  then  Governor  of  the 
Provinces,  opened  the  dormitory  a  check  came  from  Mrs. 
Livingston  Taylor  for  the  other  wing.  Friends  of  the 
late  Mr.  John  H.  Converse  have  provided  the  dormitory 
body  to  which  the  wings  are  attached.  Each  one  of 
these  buildings  had  students  living  in  them  before  they 
were  finished.  We  have  had  to  fit  up  some  of  these 
small  dormitory  rooms  as  recitation  and  laboratory 
rooms  until  we  are  fortunate  enough  to  secure  our  lab- 
oratory. The  local  government  has  promised  a  grant- 
in-aid  of  one-half  the  cost  of  a  laboratory  as  soon  as  we 
raise  the  other  half. 

With  what  equipment  we  had  my  colleagues  and  I 
were  training  Indian  boys,  both  Christian  and  non- 
Christian.  Many  missionaries  thought  we  were  run- 
ning a  reformatory  and  were  anxious  to  send  those  with 
whom  they  could  do  nothing.  At  this  time  agricultural 
education  was  not  popular  in  India,  the  government 
colleges  could  not  secure  enough  students,  the  idea  being 
that  any  old  fool  knew  how  to  farm  and  that  there  was 


64  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

nothing  that  could  be  taught  to  the  farmer  from  books. 
Gradually  in  India,  as  in  America,  the  idea  is  taking 
hold  that  the  farm,  the  ultimate  source  of  food,  as  the 
supplier  of  food  for  the  toilers  in  the  busy  cities  is 
worth  the  best  brains  the  country  can  produce.  Some 
of  the  students  of  these  early  days  are  now  rural  sec- 
retaries for  the  Y.M.C.A. ;  some  have  received  in  addi- 
tion to  agricultural  training,  special  training  in  rural 
economics  and  are  now  organizing  rural  cooperation  so- 
cieties among  the  outcastes;  some  are  managing  estates 
for  large  land-owners ;  some  are  members  of  our  faculty ; 
some  are  in  charge  of  mission  work  in  orphanages  and 
schools;  some  are  farming  for  themselves;  some  are 
working  in  Native  States ;  and  although  some  are  neither 
a  credit  to  themselves  nor  to  the  institution,  yet  I  know 
of  no  other  form  of  mission  education  in  India  where  so 
many  of  those  trained  have  put  to  the  good  of  their 
fellows  the  training  received  and  are  a  credit  to  the 
institution  that  trained  them. 

Harry  Dutt  was  the  son  of  an  Indian  Pastor,  a  nice 
boy  but  lazy.  He  felt  that  the  Mission  owed  him  an 
education.  He  had  become  parasitic  in  spirit.  Owing 
to  ill  health  he  had  not  appeared  to  take  his  college  en- 
trance examinations,  so  could  not  go  to  college.  I  was 
urged  to  admit  him  to  the  Agricultural  Institute,  and  fin- 
ally, after  much  misgiving,  consented.  During  the  first 
year  I  watched  him  carefully,  and  at  the  end  of  it  I 
called  him  to  my  office  and  said,  ""Well,  Harry,  I  have 
observed  you  carefully  for  this  year  and  I  have  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  for  your  own  good  and  the  welfare 
of  the  institution,  you  had  better  make  arrangements  to 
go  somewhere  else  for  next  year.  I  consider  you  thor- 
oughly lazy.  Your  influence  and  example  on  the  other 


HOW  THE  FARM  STARTED  65 

students  in  bad,  and  we  have  no  room  for  you  here." 
Harry  seemed  pained  and  surprised  that  I  should  so 
address  him.  He  pleaded  hard  for  another  chance.  I 
said,  "What  do  you  mean  by  another  chance?"  He  re- 
plied, "Let  me  have  a  plot  of  land  about  as  big  as  a 
farm  around  here,  and  I  will  be  responsible  for  it,  doing 
the  work  with  my  own  hands,  and  if  I  am  doing  it  alone 
you  can  then  test  my  work  in  comparison  with  other 
students,  and  if  I  do  not  satisfy  you,  then  turn  me  out. ' ' 
So  I  allowed  him  to  return.  He  was  given  five  acres  of 
land  for  which  he  was  charged  rent.  He  was  charged 
for  the  use  of  oxen  and  tools.  Three  days  a  week  he 
attended  lectures  and  laboratory.  Three  days  he  worked 
on  his  plot.  He  employed  as  general  handy-man,  cook 
and  watchman,  a  little  Christian  hunchback.  Harry 
drew  up  a  plan  for  his  plot,  growing  general  field  crops, 
and  a  vegetable  plot,  so  as  to  grow  most  of  the  food  he 
needed.  He  was  so  successful  and  hard-working  that  he 
soon  had  more  vegetables  than  he  could  eat  and  his  serv- 
ant was  taking  the  surplus  to  sell  in  the  nearby  village. 
Harry  soon  had  money  that  he  had  earned  by  his  own 
efforts  in  his  pocket,  and  he  held  his  head  higher.  He 
whistled  as  he  worked ;  he  had  learned  that  by  his  own 
efforts  he  was  sure  of  a  good  living.  At  the  end  of  the 
year  the  books  showed  that  he  had  made  a  net  profit  of 
twenty  dollars  an  acre  on  land  that  previously  had  not 
yielded  three  dollars  an  acre  net  profit.  This  plot  was 
one  of  the  show  places  of  the  farm. 

February  of  the  next  year,  after  the  corner-stone  lay- 
ing of  the  great  Hindu  University  at  Benares  six  of  In- 
dia's Maharajahs,  several  of  them  in  their  own  special 
trains  stopped  off  at  Allahabad  to  visit  the  Mission  farm. 
As  I  was  showing  one  of  these  kings  around  he  stopped 


66  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

when  he  came  to  Harry  Dutt's  plot,  so  well  laid  out, 
clean,    thrifty,    with    wonderful    crops.     His    Highness 
said,  "Whose  plot  is  this?"  I  replied,  "Harry  Dutts.' 
Come  here  Harry.     The  Maharajah  wants  to  speak  to 
you."     Harry  stepped  forward  and  answered  a  lot  of 
questions.     Then   the    Maharajah  said,  "Well,  Harry, 
come  and  take  charge  of  my  palace  gardens  and  I  will 
pay  you  one-hundred  and  fifty  rupees  a  month  with 
allowances."    Harry   looked   at   me   and   said,   "What 
shall  I  say  to  His  Highness?"    I  answered,  "You  must 
answer  for  yourself.     You  have  your  own  life  to  live." 
He  hesitated  a  moment,  then  said,  "Your  Highness,  I 
thank  you  for  your  kind  offer,  but  I  think  I  had  better 
finish  my  course  before  I  accept  a  position."    A  few 
weeks  later  I  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  Ray  Carter,  of 
Moga,  who  had  started  the  school  for  training  low-caste 
converts  to  go  out  as  village  teachers  to  their  own  peo- 
ple.    Mr.   Carter  felt  that  it  was  necessary  for  these 
teachers  to  have  a  knowledge  of  better  farming  and  so 
wanted  to  add  an  Agricultural  Department  to  the  school. 
In  his  letter  Mr.   Carter  asked  if  we  had  any  Indian 
Christian  student  well  enough  trained  to  take  charge. 
I  called  Harry  Dutt  to  my  office  and  read  Mr.  Carter's 
letter  to  him,  and  said,  "Now,  Harry,  what  do  you  think 
of  this  for  next  year?"    He  replied  that  he  had  the 
Maharajah's  offer  to  consider.    I  advised  him  to  think 
of  both.    He  took  ten  days'  leave  to  go  to  both  the 
King's  palace  and  the  Mission  School  to  look  the  jobs 
over.    When  he  returned  he  walked  into  my  office  and 
told  me  that  he  had  accepted  the  position  in  the  Mission 
School  at  Moga  at  seventy-five  rupees  a  month.    I  asked 
him  why  he  had  accepted  the  Mission  job  on  half  the 
pay  the  Maharajah  would  have  given. 


HOW  THE  FARM  STARTED  67 

He  said,  "Sir,  you  remember  that  day  you  threatened 
to  expel  me  because  I  was  lazy  ?  I  was  very  angry  with 
you  for  speaking  to  me  the  way  you  did,  but  after  think- 
ing it  over,  I  felt  that  you,  a  foreigner,  were  trying  to 
do  something  to  help  my  people,  and  I  was  hindering 
you,  so  I  decided  I  would  not  be  outdone  by  a  foreigner. 
I  too  would  give  my  life  to  help  my  own  Christian  peo- 
ple. I  have  accepted  the  lower  salary  in  the  Mission 
School  because  I  feel  I  can  help  my  own  people  better 
there  than  by  accepting  the  larger  salary  and  easier  work 
with  Maharajah." 

When  I  was  about  to  return  to  America,  the  Institute 
was  short-handed,  and  we  were  looking  round  for  some 
one  to  assist  us.  My  colleagues  unanimously  agreed  that 
we  ought  to  invite  Harry  Dutt  back  to  teach.  One  of  the 
last  pictures  I  saw  of  Harry  Dutt  was  one  in  which  he 
was  teaching  several  young  princes  how  to  use  the  Planet 
junior  wheel  hoe. 

After  we  got  fairly  started,  the  Crown  Prince  and  his 
younger  brother  a»d  four  companions  from  one  of  the 
oldest  and  most  influential  states  in  India  came  for 
training  in  farming  and  since  that  time  we  have  usually 
had  some  relative  of  one  of  the  most  ancient  Indian  royal 
houses  among  our  students.  We  are  teaching  not  only 
those  from  the  bottom  but  those  from  the  top.  I  con- 
sider that  if  these  young  nobles,  many  of  whom  will  oc- 
cupy positions  of  great  power,  understand  the 
fundamental  relation  of  larger  crops  to  the  better- 
ment of  India  a  great  forward  step  will  have  been 
taken. 

In  the  Allahabad  district  there  are  sixty-two  village 
schools,  generally  in  charge  of  a  middle-aged  or  elderly 
gentleman  who  has  never  done  a  day's  manual  work  in 


68  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

his  life.  His  salary  ranges  from  three  to  six  dollars  a 
month.  When  the  British  official  in  charge  of  the  dis- 
trict, the  Honorable  Mr.  S.  H.  Freemantle,  C.I.E.,  read 
of  what  had  been  done  in  the  southern  states  of  America 
by  the  Rockefeller  Foundation,  and  in  the  Philippine  Is- 
lands by  the  United  States,  he  arranged  that  every 
school  should  have  a  fenced-in  school  garden.  We  had  a 
special  summer  school  for  these  village  teachers  and 
while  not  much  agriculture  could  be  taught  in  ten  days 
to  these  men,  it  was  wonderful  to  see  how  their  whole  at- 
titude of  mind  toward  the  importance  of  agriculture  was 
changed,  and  with  what  enthusiasm  they  went  back  to 
their  village  schools.  We  have  had  two  or  more  of  these 
Government  teachers  each  year  taking  a  special  two 
years'  course  in  practical  agriculture  suitable  for  school 
garden  work.  The  most  important  part  of  the  work  the 
Mission  Agricultural  School  has  done  in  India,  is  not 
the  very  few  small  things  which  it  has  done  of  itself,  but 
the  fact  that  it  has  aroused  interest  and  called  attention 
to  the  fact  of  India's  need  of  better  farming  and  has 
caused  other  people  to  do  very  much  more  than  we  our- 
selves could  have  done.  Being  a  mission  institution 
every  student,  Christian  or  non-Christian,  attends  a  daily 
Bible  class  because  the  institution  believes  that  it  is  not 
better  plowing  or  larger  crops  that  is  going  to  save  India, 
important  as  they  are,  but  a  faith  which  comes  from 
knowledge  of  Jesus,  the  world's  Saviour.  It  is  not  that 
we  want  men  to  change  their  religion  just  for  the  sake 
of  changing  it,  but  because  we  believe  that  in  Jesus  there 
is  the  complete  and  adequate  satisfaction  for  every 
hunger  of  man  whether  spiritual  or  material,  whether 
for  time  or  eternity. 


"For  every  beast  of  the  forest  is  mine,  and  the  cattle  upon  a 
thousand  hills.  I  know  all  the  fowls  of  the  mountains:  and 
the  wild  beasts  of  the  field  are  mine.  If  I  were  hungry,  I 
would  not  tell  thee:  for  the  world  is  mine,  and  the  fulness 
thereof.  Will  I  eat  the  flesh  of  bulls,  or  drink  the  blood  of 
goats'?  Offer  unto  God  thanksgiving;  and  pay  thy  vows 
unto  the  most  High:  And  call  upon  me  in  the  day  of  trou- 
ble: I  will  deliver  thee,  and  thou  shalt  glorify  me." 

Ps.  50:10-15. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   CATTLE  PROBLEM   OF  INDIA 

There  are  over  260,000,000  domesticated  homed  cattle, 
including  water  buffaloes  in  India.  This  works  out  to 
sixty-five  head  of  cattle  to  every  hundred  of  the  popula- 
tion. Hence  in  the  densely  populated  areas  there  is  a 
very  keen  economic  competition  between  the  human  be- 
ings and  the  cattle  for  the  produce  of  the  soil.  My  ob- 
servation leads  me  to  believe  that  over  ninety  per  cent, 
of  these  cattle  are  an  economic  loss  to  the  country,  that 
is,  the  cow  does  not  pay  her  board  in  the  milk  and  off- 
spring which  she  gives,  and  the  ox  is  of  so  little  value 
that  it  does  not  pay  to  raise  him.  Over  ninety  per  cent, 
of  the  cows  of  India  give  less  than  six  hundred  pounds  of 
milk  a  year.  In  most  parts  of  India  a  three  year  old 
ox  can  be  bought  for  twenty  dollars.  The  milk  and  food 
he  ate  in  his  first  year  was  worth  more  than  this.  I 
estimate  that  the  loss  per  animal  per  year  for  225,000,- 
000  head  is  ten  dollars  each,  or  a  total  aggregate  loss  per 
year  of  $2,250,000,000. 

69 


70  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

The  cow  is  the  most  sacred  of  all  the  gods  of  India. 
It  is  worshipped  by  the  Hindu.  Hence  the  remedy  for 
the  excess  of  cattle  in  the  western  world  can  not  be  ap- 
plied in  India.  In  the  west  this  excess  of  cattle  would 
be  sent  to  the  packing  houses,  but  in  India,  except  for 
the  small  number  of  cattle  eaten  by  the  Mohammedans 
and  Europeans  most  of  the  cattle  die  of  old  age  or 
disease.  The  solution  of  the  cattle  problem  of  India 
by  the  Hindu  himself  is  one1  of  the  most  important  and 
necessary  reforms  of  India.  It  is  evident  that  being  a 
Hindu  religious  question  it  is  not  for  a  non-Hindu  to 
decide  it,  but  as  a  student  of  economics  it  is  left  to  one 
to  point  out  that  the  enormous  number  of  cattle  which 
do  not  pay  their  way  are  a  very  serious  economic  drain 
to  a  country  as  poor  as  India.  It  is  not  more  cattle  but 
better  cattle  that  India  needs. 

It  is  obvious  how  the  cow  and  the  sacred  bull  rose  to 
their  place  of  preeminence  in  India.  The  ox  is  the 
source  of  India's  power  whether  it  be  pulling  the  plow, 
drawing  the  water  from  the  well,  treading  out  the  grain 
or  taking  the  produce  to  market.  He  is  well  nigh  in- 
dispensable, and  has  no  substitute.  The  ox  can  work  in 
an  average  mean  temperature  of  eight  to  ten  degrees 
hotter  than  the  horse  can  stand.  With  the  very  small 
holdings  which  obtain  in  the  densely  populated  parts  of 
India,  power  machinery  is  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
farmer  and  if  he  could  afford  it,  his  holding  is  too  small 
to  make  its  use  profitable.  Therefore  the  ox  seems  des- 
tined to  remain  the  source  of  India's  power.  There  are 
many  more  breeds  of  cattle  in  India  than  there  are  in 
Europe  or  America.  Some  of  these  breeds  are  unsur- 
passed for  draft  and  speed.  Some  are  of  excellent  beef 
type.  There  is  no  real  first  class  dairy  breed.  The  best 


THE  CATTLE  PROBLEM  OF  INDIA         71 

Indian  animals  give  between  five  and  seven  thousand 
pounds  per  year  as  against  the  best  dairy  breeds  of 
America  giving  between  twenty  and  thirty  thousand 
pounds  of  milk  a  year. 

I  account  for  the  rise  of  the  Brahamini  bull  to  power 
in  the  following  way.  In  the  case  of  the  failure  of  the 
rains  it  is  the  cattle  that  suffer  the  most  severely.  Owing 
to  the  failure  of  the  rains  in  1918  in  the  Ahmadnagar 
district  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  cattle  died  because  there 
was  no  fodder.  The  Bombay  Times  of  the  fifteenth  of 
August,  1919,  reported  that  in  the  preceding  year  from 
fifty  to  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  cattle  had  died  in  Scinde 
because  of  lack  of  fodder  and  lack  of  roads.  These 
famines  are  so  severe  that  unless  special  provision  were 
made  it  would  be  quite  possible  over  a  very  large  ter- 
ritory, for  every  single  animal  to  die.  Thus  special 
provision  must  be  taken  and  many  animals  are  kept  by 
the  temples  and  share  in  the  offerings  made  to  the 
priests. 

In  connection  with  many  of  the  temples  one  of  the 
acts  of  worship  is  for  the  worshiper  to  take  hold  of  the 
brush  at  the  end  of  the  cow's  tail,  under  instructions  of 
the  priest.  These  cattle  around  the  temples  have  a 
chance  to  live  even  though  all  the  other  cattle  round 
about  die. 

In  the  densely  populated  parts  of  India  the  farm  is 
so  small  that  it  is  impossible  to  keep  many  cattle.  The 
farmer  usually  keeps  only  one  cow  in  order  to  raise  the 
work  oxen  to  do  his  plowing  and  to  provide  a  little  milk. 
Under  these  circumstances  the  one  farmer  can  not  afford 
to  keep  a  bull  or  if  he  did  keep  one,  the  other  farmers 
would  not  be  willing  to  pay  for  the  use  of  the  bull. 
Therefore  the  custom  has  arisen,  usually  in  celebration 


72  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

of  some  domestic  event,  that  as  a  thank  offering,  one  of 
the  villagers  takes  a  bull  calf  to  the  priest  and  has  the 
sacred  brand  stamped  upon  it  and  henceforth  it  is 
sacred.  It  is  then  turned  loose.  No  one  may  tie  it  up 
and  it  goes  into  the  fields  or  into  the  village  eating  at  its 
own  sweet  will  and  is  usually  in  very  good  condition. 
The  trouble  with  this  method  of  breeding  cattle  is  that 
there  is  no  control.  I  have  investigated  a  good  many 
cases  where  cows  of  a  fair  dairy  breed  were  brought  into 
a  district.  The  daughters  of  these  cows  sired  by  a  local 
sacred  bull  give  from  one-half  to  one-fourth  of  the  milk 
that  the  mother  gave,  proving  that  these  sacred  bulls  are 
often  very  inferior  dairy-breeding  animals.  Often- 
times the  bull  calf  thus  sacrificed  is  deformed  or  very 
small  in  size  or  unsuitable  for  some  other  reason  for 
making  into  a  work  ox,  thus  with  inferior  sires  the 
breeding  of  the  cattle  seems  to  be  progressively  worse. 
In  certain  parts  of  India  there  are  certain  castes  whose 
business  it  is  to  breed  cattle  and  they  are  very  careful 
not  to  allow  a  sacred  bull  into  their  herds  and  also  to 
choose  good  sires.  They  keep  up  the  standard  of  their 
own  particular  breed. 

The  cattle  of  India  are  in  general  much  more  docile 
and  easily  handled  than  western  cattle.  This  may  be 
from  the  fact  that  they  are  often  regarded  as  members 
of  the  family  from  birth,  in  and  out  of  the  house  at 
will.  The  placid,  contemplative  cow  is  the  type  that 
appeals  very  strongly  to  the  Hindu  religious  mystic 
whose  idea  is  to  spend  his  time  out  in  the  forest  away 
from  man,  contemplating,  as  the  cow  appears  to  be  do- 
ing as  she  placidly  chews  her  cud. 

In  Europe  the  man  who  formerly  wished  to  perpetuate 
his  name  built  a  cathedral ;  in  modern  America  he  builds 


THE  CATTLE  PROBLEM  OF  INDIA         73 

a  University;  in  modern  India  he  builds  and  maintains 
a  "Gowshala"  where  the  aged,  deformed,  sick  and  de- 
crepit cows  can  be  sure  of  being  well  cared  for,  until  they 
die  a  natural  death.  Much  more  is  being  done  in  India 
by  the  Hindus  to  preserve  the  cattle  than  to  preserve  the 
sick,  decrepit  and  ill-nourished  men  and  women. 

There  are  a  number  of  breeds  of  water-buffaloes  in 
India ;  some  of  which  are  no  better  than  those  found  in 
the  Philippine  Islands  or  China.  Some  breeds  are  ex- 
cellent dairy  animals.  The  Delhi  buffaloes  weighing 
anywhere  from  fifteen  hundred  pounds  to  a  ton,  with 
short,  intensely  curled  horns,  often  give  six  to  seven 
thousand  pounds  of  milk  a  year  having  seven  and  a  half 
to  nine  per  cent,  of  butter  fat.  In  the  Government  Mili- 
tary Dairies  where  some  attention  is  now  being  paid  to 
the  improvement  of  the  dairy  cattle  of  India  a  number 
of  buffaloes  have  given  over  ten  thousand  pounds  of 
milk  a  year  of  about  eight  per  cent,  butter  fat.  The 
buffalo  is  much  more  nervous  than  the  cow  and  must  be 
handled  more  gently.  Their  habit  is  to  feed  at  night 
and  in  the  day  time  lie  in  water  with  only  the  eyes  and 
nose  showing.  There  is  one  breed  of  buffaloes  that  has 
four  perfectly  formed  quarters  and  only  two  teats.  There 
are  no  rudimentaries  or  anything  to  suggest  that  two 
teats  have  been  lost.  They  are  a  very  fair  milking  breed 
and  are  worth  investigation.  I  believe  that  the  water 
buffalo  of  India  has  a  future  in  the  southern  states  of 
America,  notably  in  Florida  where  there  is  an  abundance 
of  water  with  lots  of  roughage. 

The  cattle  of  India  are  usually  hardy  and  resistant  to 
disease.  Most  of  the  cattle  of  India  are  only  slightly 
affected  by  foot  and  mouth  disease  and  are  immune  to 
tick  fever.  Tuberculosis  is  very  rare  among  them.  For 


74  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

this  reason  they  have  proved  themselves  of  use  in  Texas 
and  other  southern  states,  being  crossed  with  our  west- 
ern breeds. 

The  Bikanir  camels  are  said  to  be  the  finest  in  the 
world.  The  great  help  that  the  Bikanir  Camel  Corps 
gave  in  defending  the  Suez  Canal  and  in  pursuing  the 
retreating  Turks  is  a  glorious  chapter  in  the  history  of 
the  Great  War.  The  Bikanir  sheep  is  one  of  the  finest- 
wooled  sheep  known  and  is  worth  studying  and  develop- 
ing. India  is  a  land  that  has  millions  of  goats.  Some 
of  these  give  as  high  as  eight  pounds  of  milk  a  day. 
Some  of  them  give  actually  more  milk  than  many  of  the 
cows. 

The  cattle  problem  of  India  cannot  be  solved  until 
there  is  an  adequate  veterinary  force  with  power  to  stamp 
out  disease  as  was  done  in  the  Philippines.  We  must 
not  forget  however  and  disregard  the  fact  that  in  the 
Philippines  it  was  infinitely  easier  because  there  were  a 
number  of  islands  and  segregation  was  easy,  while  India 
is  a  great  continent  and  thus  almost  impossible  to  isolate 
and  segregate.  The  bigness  of  the  problem  however  is 
no  reason  why  it  should  not  be  tackled.  The  longer  the 
delay  the  greater  the  progressive  economic  loss  to  India. 

It  was  seeing  the  importance  of  the  cattle  as  the  power 
of  India  that  led  me  to  make  my  first  serious  agricultural 
study  the  means  to  safe-guard  this  power.  I  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  silo  was  the  best  single  means. 
During  the  normal  rains  in  India  enormous  quantities  of 
fodder  grasses  grow,  both  cultivated  and  wild.  If  at 
this  time  earthen  silo  pits  could  be  dug  and  filled  with 
these  grasses  it  would  keep  for  years.  These  pits  would 
be  a  fodder  bank.  If  when  the  time  of  scarcity  came  this 
fodder  bank  could  be  drawn  upon,  millions  of  cattle  that 
are  now  lost  could  be  saved.  Here  again  ignorance  and 


THE  CATTLE  PROBLEM  OF  INDIA         75 

illiteracy  have  stood  in  the  way  of  such  a  simple  and 
obvious  reform  as  this.  Furthermore  in  these  silo  pits 
a  great  deal  of  vegetation  which  the  cattle  will  not  eat 
normally  can  be  turned  into  succulent  fodder.  The 
students  of  the  Allahabad  Agricultural  Institute 
counted  and  named  twenty-two  weeds  which  the  cattle 
would  not  eat  green  which  were  put  into  the  farm  silo 
pit,  and  at  the  end  of  two  months  were  fed  to  the  cattle 
and  the  dairy  herd  increased  in  milk  production. 

In  the  Old  Testament  a  truly  delectable  land  is  de- 
scribed as  "A  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey." 
Modern  India  has  the  same  conception  of  physical  and 
material  blessedness.  Yet  as  one  gets  to  know  India  and 
sees  its  multitudes  of  cattle,  one  is  struck  by  the  great 
difficulty  of  getting  reasonably  pure  milk.  Dr.  H.  H. 
Mann  of  Poona,  Mr.  Carruth  of  Madras,  Dr.  Joshi  of 
Bombay,  Major  Matson  of  Calcutta  have  all  investigated 
city  milk  supplies  in  India  and  each  speak  of  the  very 
few  samples  of  milk  taken  from  the  milk  sellers  that 
were  pure,  most  of  them  adulterated  from  twenty  to 
seventy-five  per  cent,  with  water.  Now  if  the  water  with 
which  the  milk  was  adulterated  were  only  pure  water  not 
so  much  harm  would  result,  but  often  the  water  used  to 
adulterate  the  milk  is  unclean.  It  is  likely  to  be  con- 
taminated with  sewage  and  is  very  dangerous  to  health. 
Many  serious  attacks  of  dysentery,  cholera  and  typhoid 
have  been  traced  to  milk  adulterated  with  dirty  water. 
Because  of  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  pure  milk  in  India 
the  military  authorities  put  in  their  own  dairies  to 
supply  the  troops  with  safe  milk  and  of  better  quality. 
The  milk  is  supplied  to  the  troops  in  bottles,  sealed  with 
the  standard  cap  and  seal  made  in  Chicago.  It  is  the 
only  bottle  fastener  I  have  ever  seen  that  the  Indian 


76  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

milkman  could  not  tamper  with.  If  the  cost  to  the 
military  for  milk  and  butter  be  considered  apart  from 
anything  else,  the  cost  is  rather  high,  but  when  the 
medical  figures  are  considered  along  with  the  cost,  the 
absence  among  the  troops  of  enteric  disease  since  the 
installation  of  the  military  dairies,  it  is  then  seen  that 
many  lives  are  saved  annually  by  these  military  dairies. 
In  addition  to  providing  good  milk  and  butter  for  the 
troops  the  military  dairies,  in  an  indirect  way,  are  doing 
much  to  better  the  dairy  industry  in  India.  They  set 
standards  of  cleanliness  and  sanitation.  They  are  im- 
porting pure  bred  bulls  of  the  noted  dairy  breeds,  many 
of  the  offspring  of  which  are  sold  at  auction  and  eagerly 
bought  by  the  India  Gowala  (the  caste  that  looks  after 
the  cows)  with  the  result  that  the  Gowala  is  growing 
less  and  less  satisfied  with  the  poor  yields  of  the  Indian 
cow.  The  Gowala  now  wants  better  stock. 

In  our  mission  dairy  farm  we  have  had  no  trouble  in 
disposing  of  all  our  milk,  much  of  it  goes  to  educated 
Indians  of  caste  who  appreciate  it  for  their  children.  A 
Missionary's  daughter  at  seven  months  old  was  one 
pound  lighter  than  the  day  she  was  born.  The  doctor 
said  it  was  due  to  bad  milk.  The  mother  said  the 
Gowala  brought  the  cow  and  milked  it  in  front  of  her  and 
she  did  not  see  how  the  milk  could  not  be  pure.  The 
doctor  said  he  could  not  see  either,  but  the  baby's  lack 
of  growth  was  because  of  bad  milk  causing  dysentery. 
The  mother  brought  the  baby  to  live  near  our  mission 
dairy  and  drove  night  and  morning  to  get  our  fresh 
pure  milk.  At  eleven  months  the  baby  was  normal  in 
weight  and  the  last  time  I  saw  her  she  was  a  beautiful, 
well-grown  child.  We  feel  that  we  owe  the  life  of  at 
least  one  of  our  own  children  to  the  good,  pure  milk  sup- 


THE  CATTLE  PROBLEM  OF  INDIA         77 

plied  by  the  mission  dairy.  The  Government  is  very 
anxious  for  us  to  have  a  properly  equipped  dairy  school 
where  we  can  train  Indians  to  go  out  to  supply  the  In- 
dian cities  with  pure  milk.  The  medical  authorities  feel 
that  a  good  supply  of  pure,  clean  milk  for  Indian  cities 
would  do  much  to  reduce  the  high  infant  mortality. 
So  we  are  anxious  to  get  our  dairy  equipment  as  soon  as 
possible  to  enable  us  to  meet  this  urgent  demand  and 
a  thoroughly  trained  dairyman  who  is  not  afraid  of  dif- 
ficult problems. 


"When  heaven  is  shut  up,  and  there  is  no  rain,  because  they 
have  sinned  against  thee;  if  they  pray  toward  this  place,  and 
confess  thy  name,  and  turn  from  their  sin,  when  thou  afflictest 
them:  Then  hear  thou  in  heaven,  and  forgive  the  sin  of  thy 
servants,  and  of  thy  people  Israel,  that  thou  teach  them  the 
good  way  wherein  they  should  walk,  and  give  rain  upon  thy 
land,  which  thou  hast  given  to  thy  people  for  an  inheritance. 
If  there  be  in  the  land  famine,  if  there  be  pestilence,  blast- 
ing mildew,  locust,  or  if  there  be  caterpillar;  if  their  enemy 
besiege  them  in  the  land  of  their  cities;  whatsoever  plague, 
whatsoever  sickness  there  be;  What  prayer  and  supplication 
soever  be  made  by  any  man,  or  by  all  thy  people  Israel, 
which  shall  know  every  man  the  plague  of  his  own  heart,  and 
spread  forth  his  hands  toward  this  house:  Then  hear  thou 
in  heaven  thy  dwelling  place,  and  forgive,  and  do,  and  give 
to  every  man  according  to  his  ways,  whose  heart  thou  know- 
est;  (for  thou,  even  thou  only,  knowest  the  hearts  of  all  the 
children  of  men;) 

•          ***•**** 

Blessed  be  the  Lord,  that  hath  given  rest  unto  his  people 
Israel,  according  to  all  that  he  promised;  there  hath  not 
failed  one  word  of  all  his  good  promise,  which  he  promised  by 
the  hand  of  Moses  his  servant.  The  Lord  our  God  be  with) 
us,  as  he  was  with  our  fathers :  let  him  not  leave  us,  nor  for- 
sake us :  That  he  may  incline  our  hearts  unto  him,  to  walk  in 
all  his  ways,  and  to  keep  his  commandments,  and  his  statutes, 
and  his  judgments,  which  he  commanded  our  fathers." 

I  Kings  8:35-39**56-57-58. 


CHAPTER  VII 


I  am  frequently  asked  what  the  British  government 
has  done  for  India  and  why  it  does  not  do  more.  I  hold 
no  brief  for  the  government  and  I  can  point  out  serious 
mistakes  it  has  made.  But  others  have  written  power- 
fully of  these  mistakes,  while  few  have  spoken  of  the 
positive,  constructive  side  of  British  administration  in 
India,  so  I  shall  confine  myself  chiefly  to  the  credit  side 
of  the  account.  Among  the  things  that  the  British  have 
given  to  India  is  the  system  of  law  courts  which  rec- 
ognizes all  men  as  equals  before  the  law.  This,  in  a 
country  of  many  religions  and  many  languages,  and 
above  all  of  caste,  is  a  very  important  thing. 

India  has  a  postal,  money-order  and  telegraph  system 
which  is  very  much  cheaper  and  better  than  the  Ameri- 
can. In  1914  a  twelve  word  telegram  could  be  sent  any- 
where in  the  Indian  Empire  for  twelve  cents,  no  zone 
system,  one  flat  rate  for  the  whole  country.  If  the  tele- 
gram were  sent  by  cable  from  Aden  which  is  five  days' 
mail  steamer  journey  from  Bombay  then  across  India  by 
land,  again  under  the  Bay  of  Bengal  by  cable  to  Ran- 
goon, it  would  be  sent  over  three  thousand  miles.  The 
postcard  costs  one-half  cent,  a  sealed  letter  one  cent. 
Five  rupees  ($1.66)  or  multiples  of  five  rupees  can  be 
sent  by  money  order  for  two  cents  for  each  five  rupees. 

78 


THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA       79 

The  money-order  form  consists  of  four  parts;  one  is  re- 
tained by  the  office  receiving  the  money,  one  is  kept  by 
the  office  distributing  the  money,  one  is  kept  by  the  man 
receiving  the  money  and  the  fourth  is  returned  to  the 
remitter  with  the  signature  of  the  receiver  and  is  consid- 
ered a  legal  receipt.  Furthermore  the  postman  actually 
brings  the  money  to  the  person  who  is  to  receive  it.  So 
there  is  not  the  waste  of  time  going  to  the  post  office  to 
get  the  money.  How  much  greater  service  is  this  than 
the  modern  American  money-order  service.  The  post- 
man also  sells  stamps  and  postcards  on  his  rounds. 

India  has  approximately  thirty-six  thousand  miles  of 
railroad,  unfortunately  divided  between  four  gauges, 
five-foot-six-inch  gauge,  meter-gauge,  two-foot-six-inch, 
and  two-foot  gauge.  No  narrow  gauge  railway  enters 
an  Indian  port,  though  the  narrow  gauge  often  serves  a 
very  rich  and  large  district.  There  is  therefore  a  very 
great  economic  loss  in  the  trans-shipment  of  goods  from 
the  various  gauges.  Most  of  these  railways  were  built 
with  capital  borrowed  at  a  low  rate  of  interest,  none  of 
it  above  six  per  cent,  and  most  of  it  much  below.  In 
order  to  induce  capital  to  invest  in  Indian  railroads  the 
British  government  guaranteed  the  interest  to  the  in- 
vestors which  the  railway  paid  or  not.  With  the  credit 
of  the  British  government  the  Indian  railways  were  thus 
built  about  as  cheaply  as  any  railroads  on  earth  and  the 
public  in  India  gets  the  benefit.  The  mail  trains  be- 
tween Calcutta  and  Bombay,  thirteen  hundred  miles,  be- 
tween Calcutta  and  Lahore,  about  the  same  distance,  run 
at  about  thirty-three  miles  an  hour  for  the  whole  of  the 
distance.  The  first  class  accommodation  which  equals 
if  it  does  not  excel  the  Pullman,  costs  between  three  and 
four  cents  a  mile,  second  class  about  two  cents,  inter- 


80  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

mediate  less  than  one  cent  and  third  class  three  miles 
for  one  cent.  Had  the  railways  of  India  been  com- 
pelled to  depend  upon  Indian  capital  for  their  building 
there  would  have  been  very  great  difficulty  and  fewer 
miles  of  road,  for  the  Indian  investor  or  money-lender, 
the  Bania,  is  seldom  satisfied  with  less  than  sixteen  per 
cent,  per  annum  but  prefers  from  seventy-two  to  one 
hundred  per  cent,  per  annum.  The  history  of  famines 
in  India  is  divided  into  two  clearly  marked  portions,  one 
before  the  coming  of  the  railroads  when  famine  in  any 
district  meant  death  to  great  numbers  of  the  people  and 
to  cattle  without  any  hope  of  relief.  It  is  on  record 
that  Agra  was  having  famine  during  which  more  than 
half  of  the  people  died.  At  Mainpuri,  less  than  one  hun- 
dred miles  distant  from  Agra,  grain  was  being  sold  at 
two  pounds  for  a  cent.  Owing  to  the  absence  of  roads 
or  railroads  everything  had  to  be  transported  on  pack 
oxen  which  made  it  a  physical  impossibility  to  transport 
enough  grain,  even  over  such  a  short  distance,  to  save 
the  people.  (See  Sir  Theodore  Morison  "The  Industrial 
Equipment  of  an  Indian  Province.")  A  hundred  miles 
in  those  days  under  those  conditions  was  at  least  a 
week's  journey.  To-day  when  famine  occurs  special 
rates  are  given  on  the  railroads  for  the  transporting  of 
grain  and  fodder  into  the  affected  area  and  very  few 
people  die  compared  with  the  pre-railway  period. 
"Famine"  in  India  is  not  always  understood  in  America. 
Seldom  is  there  a  time  in  India  when  there  is  not  food 
enough  to  go  around.  In  the  same  year  one  part  of 
India  may  be  breaking  the  record  by  a  bumper  crop  and 
a  short  distance  away  there  may  be  a  total  crop  failure. 
The  beginning  of  the  agricultural  year  in  India  is  the 


THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA       81 

beginning  of  the  "rains,"  in  Northern  India  about  the 
first  of  July.  If  the  rains  fail,  there  is  no  work  for  the 
farmer  or  for  the  very  large  number  of  casual  landless 
laborers.  Without  the  rain  the  fodder  crops  can  not 
be  grown,  neither  can  the  fields  be  prepared  for  the  grain 
crops  which  are  grown  in  the  cold  season.  Therefore  the 
failure  of  the  rains  means  the  absence  of  work  for  twelve 
months  or  until  the  next  rains,  and  the  absence  of  work 
means  absence  of  wages  and  the  absence  of  wages  means 
absence  of  food,  therefore  starvation.  Indian  merchants 
are  like  any  other  merchants.  They  do  not  see  why,  if 
they  deal  in  grain  and  pay  their  money  for  it,  they 
should  not  sell  it  at  a  profit.  They  cannot  see  why  they 
should  be  compelled  to  give  it  away  because  somebody 
else  has  not  bought  and  stored  it  and  cannot  afford  to 
buy.  The  grain  merchant  gets  little  sympathy  when  a 
bumper  harvest  compels  him  to  sell  at  a  loss  the  grain 
bought  and  stored  with  so  much  care. 

India  in  general  is  remarkable  for  its  generosity  in 
famine  times.  The  poor  help  one  another  with  gifts  of 
grain.  Recognizing  the  true  cause  of  famine,  the  British 
government  has  drawn  up  a  code  which  prescribes  the 
course  to  be  followed  in  case  of  scarcity.  A  large  re- 
serve fund  has  been  accumulated  for  the  purpose  of 
caring  for  the  people  during  the  famine.  Much  govern- 
ment labor,  digging  of  canals,  the  building  of  roads, 
railways,  bridges,  clearing  of  forests,  damming  of  rivers, 
putting  in  storage  reservoirs,  is  all  undertaken  as  famine 
relief  work.  The  policy  is  to  pay  wages  lower  than 
market  rates,  so  that  as  soon  as  conditions  improve  in 
the  country  around  about,  the  people  will  automatically 
disappear  from  the  famine  relief  works.  Thus  private 


82  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

enterprise  will  not  suffer  from  lack  of  labor  due  to  gov- 
ernment competition.  When  there  is  no  work  in  the 
villages  the  people  come  to  the  famine  relief  work.  As 
soon  as  private  enterprise  can  pay  more  than  famine 
work  the  private  enterprise  gets  its  labor.  In  addition, 
to  the  land-owner,  and  to  tenants  having  permanent 
rights  in  the  land,  advances  are  made  of  money, 
"Tacavi,"  long-term  loans,  usually  at  three  per  cent. 
This  money  is  to  be  spent  for  permanent  improvements, 
such  as  digging  of  wells  with  permanent  masonry  cylin- 
ders or  tile  draining  of  land,  the  building  of  store  rooms 
of  permanent  material.  One  of  the  best  ways  to  prevent 
famine  is  to  increase  the  irrigation  facilities,  for  where 
there  is  an  abundant  supply  of  irrigation  water  people 
are  indifferent  to  the  amount  of  rainfall.  As  a  result  of 
the  irrigation  system,  large  tracts  that  formerly  were 
desert  and  very  precarious  and  uncertain  are  now  secure 
against  any  failure  of  the  rains.  The  irrigation  pro- 
jects of  India  are  divided  into  two  classes,  one  protective, 
the  other  productive.  In  the  case  of  the  protective  irri- 
gation project,  the  object  is  not  to  earn  large  dividends, 
but  the  protection  of  the  people  in  a  famine  year.  In 
parts  of  Central  India  which  normally  get  sufficient  rain- 
fall, there  is  every  four  or  five  years  a  partial  or  total 
failure  of  the  rains  when  suffering  and  loss  is  very  great. 
Large  irrigation  works  with  storage  reservoirs  have  been 
put  in.  When  there  is  a  normal  rainfall  there  is  little 
or  no  demand  for  the  water  which  has  been  stored  and 
the  project  does  not  pay  directly  that  year,  but  when 
the  rain  fails,  this  water  that  has  been  stored,  is  used 
and  enables  the  country  to  tide  over  a  bad  time  without 
serious  loss.  The  loss  of  water  by  surface  evaporation  is 


THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA       83 

not  less  than  eight  feet  per  year.  So  that  to  do  any 
good  these  irrigation  works  have  to  have  such  large 
storage  capacity  that  they  are  sometimes  larger  than 
seems  necessary.  One  very  interesting  by-product  of 
this  large  storage  reservoir  system  is  that  there  is  a  seep- 
age and  ground  flow  with  a  lateral  movement  of  the 
water  in  the  soil,  so  that  wells  five  or  six  miles  away 
from  the  storage  reservoir  that  would  have  gone  dry 
before  the  storage  was  put  in,  now  have  an  abundance 
of  water  all  through  the  dry  season.  These  works  are 
well  named  protective,  and  fully  justify  their  construc- 
tion. 

In  the  case  of  the  productive  works  there  were  large 
areas  of  good  land  in  the  region  of  deficient  rain-fall 
in  Northwest  India  insluding  the  Punjab  where  the  slope 
was  right  and  the  rivers,  the  Jhelum,  the  Ravi,  the 
Chenab,  the  Beas,  the  Sutlej  and  the  Indus,  bring  down 
an  abundance  of  snow  waters  from  the  Himalaya  mount- 
ains which  can  easily  be  spread  over  the  desert  of  the 
Punjab  and  cause  it  to  blossom  as  the  rose.  Ten  mil- 
lion acres  are  now  thus  irrigated  and  schemes  are  pre- 
pared for  the  irrigation  of  twelve  million  more  acres. 
The  Bhakra  Dam  project  on  the  Sutlej  will  give  300,000 
H.P.  The  height  of  the  dam,  394  ft.,  will  make  it  the 
highest  in  the  world.  The  area  that  will  be  irrigated 
will  be  four  times  the  irrigated  area  of  Egypt. 

' '  The  value  of  the  crops  raised  by  the  aid  of  the  canal 
water  during  1918  and  1919  was  well  over  fifty-five 
crores  of  rupees  (a  crore  is  ten  million  rupees  and  the 
value  of  a  rupee  at  that  time  was  about  forty-five  cents), 
so  the  value  of  crops  was  $247,500,000.  Had  there 
been  no  canals  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  area  concerned 


84  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

would  not  have  produced  crops  to  the  value  of  more 
than  ten  crores.  The  minimum  new  wealth  created  in  a 
single  year,  was  thus  forty-five  crores  of  rupees.  The 
value  of  the  year's  crops  amount  to  two  and  one-half 
times  the  total  capital  outlay  on  the  whole  canal  system 
concerned.  These  productive  canals  earned  in  direct 
receipts  a  net  return  of  7.4  per  cent,  of  which,  after  de- 
fraying interest  charges,  the  net  return  was  4.96  per 
cent.  The  direct  canal  charges  for  water  averaged  Rs. 
5.3  per  acre  of  crop  matured  out  of  a  gross  value  of  Rs. 
64  per  acre  of  the  crop  grown."  Quoted  from  The 
Pioneer  Mail  of  June  18,  1920. 

In  the  same  year  over  nine  million  acres  were  irri- 
gated and  over  twenty  thousand  miles  of  canals  were 
operated  in  the  Punjab  alone  and  over  fourteen  million 
acres  were  irrigated  by  flow  in  the  whole  of  India.  It  is 
safe  to  say  that  the  government  has  charged  to  the  culti- 
vator a  much  lower  water  rate  than  a  private  concern 
would  have  done.  It  is  hard  to  over-estimate  the  value 
of  an  irrigation  system  to  a  people.  It  gives  a  sense  of 
security  and  certainty  that  nothing  else  does. 

During  the  war  the  irrigation  department  went  on 
and  was  very  largely  increased.  It  is  estimated  that 
two  hundred  and  twelve  million  dollars  have  been  in- 
vested by  the  government  in  irrigation  in  British  India 
and  it  has  still  larger  projects  in  hand.  Not  only  is 
there  promise  of  more  water  for  irrigation  but  an 
abundance  of  water  for  hydro-electrical  power.  No- 
table examples  are  already  in  operation.  The  mills, 
factories,  the  street  car  lines  of  Bombay  are  run  largely 
by  water-power  that  falls  down  the  "Western  Ghauts 
from  thirteen  to  seventeen  hundred  feet  in  a  sheer  fall. 


THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA       85 

This  is  of  very  great  importance  when  we  remember  that 
most  of  the  coal  used  in  Bombay  is  mined  in  Bengal  and 
all  during  the  war  had  to  take  an  eleven  hundred  mile 
railway  haul  from  the  pit  to  Bombay  at  a  charge  of  five 
dollars  a  ton  freight. 

The  British  have  been  accused  of  taxing  India  so 
heavily  as  to  be  the  cause  of  India's  poverty.  Investiga- 
tion shows  that  India  is  one  of  the  least  taxed  countries 
on  earth  whether  measured  on  percentages  or  by  actual 
figures.  The  statement  was  recently  made  in  the  United 
States  that  the  British  took  one-half  of  the  produce  of 
the  soil  in  taxation.  This  is  not  the  case.  Such  a 
statement  arises  out  of  a  misunderstanding,  a  confusion 
between  land  revenue  and  produce  of  the  soil.  The  dif- 
ferent provinces  of  India  have  different  systems  of  land 
tenure.  A  good  many  of  these  systems,  like  Topsy,  have 
just  grown.  Bengal  for  instance  has  what  is  known 
as  the  "Permanent  Settlement"  where  the  landlords 
of  Bengal  and  the  government  came  to  an  agreement  by 
which  the  amount  of  land  revenue  to  be  paid  by  the 
land-owner  to  the  government  was  fixed  for  all  time. 
The  great  omission  in  this  agreement  was  that  the  amount 
of  rent  to  be  paid  by  the  tenant  to  the  land-owner  was 
not  fixed  for  all  time.  Whatever  else  the  British  have 
done  or  have  not  done  for  India,  they  certainly  have 
brought  peace.  They  have  prevented  the  intertribal, 
internecine  warfare.  They  have  guaranteed  to  every  man 
safety  and  protection.  With  the  incoming  of  roads, 
railroads,  water  transportation,  irrigation  facilities,  with 
the  opening  of  Calcutta,  so  that  to-day  it  is  the  largest 
port  in  Asia,  great  demand  for  the  products  of  Bengal, 
its  jute,  rice,  tea,  indigo  and  pulses,  have  caused  the 


86  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

population  to  increase  rapidly.  The  result  is  an  in- 
creased competition  to  secure  land.  Therefore  while  the 
land-lords  in  Bengal  have  been  able  to  increase  their  rent 
at  will  to  the  tenant,  the  limit  being  only  what  the  land- 
lord could  squeeze  out  of  the  farmer,  the  amount  he  has 
paid  to  the  government  has  remained  fixed.  The  land- 
lord is  the  one  who  has  received  the  lion's  share  of  the 
unearned  increment  of  the  land.  It  has  not  been  fairly 
divided.  To-day  all  the  other  provinces  of  India  are 
taxed  to  provide  Bengal  with  money  enough  to  run  its 
government.  Bengal  has  a  large  number  of  wealthy 
land-owners,  many  of  them  opulent  profiteers,  whose 
position  has  been  strengthened  by  time.  The  injustice 
wrought  through  such  an  iniquitous  contract  falls  very 
heavily  upon  the  many,  but  the  few  who  profit  have 
never  been  willing  to  give  up  anything.  The  British 
government  made  a  bad  bargain  for  itself  and  has  stuck 
to  it,  in  order  to  keep  its  word. 

In  the  United  Provinces,  which  has  an  area  of  ap- 
proximately one  hundred  thousand  square  miles,  and  a 
population  of  about  fifty  million  people,  there  is  a  land- 
owner class  and  a  tenant  class.  When  the  British  en- 
tered this  part  of  India,  more  often  by  contract  than  by 
conquest,  they  brought  peace.  In  the  old  days  the  chiefs 
maintained  themselves  by  strength  of  arms.  The  larger 
and  better  trained  the  fighting  force  of  the  chief  the 
easier  he  could  gobble  up  the  smaller  chief,  and  defend 
himself  in  case  of  attack.  There  was  then  great  com- 
petition for  the  services  of  fighting  men  who  were  treated 
very  generously  by  the  chiefs,  and  given  land  on  very 
favorable  terms.  When  the  British  came  in,  ignorant 
of  the  real  state  of  affairs,  thinking  the  conditions  were 


THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA       87 

similar  to  the  conditions  in  England  where  there  was 
a  large  land-owning  class,  a  yeoman  class  and  farm- 
laborer  class,  they  confirmed  the  chief  as  land-owner  and 
the  fighting  man  was  considered  the  yeoman.  With  the 
coming  of  peace  the  yeoman  lost  his  value  as  a  fighting 
man  which  was  due  to  the  strong  hand  of  the  British 
preventing  the  chiefs  fighting  among  themselves.  The 
fighting  man  soon  became  little  better  than  a  serf.  For 
thirty  years  legislation  has  been  enacted  seeking  to  re- 
store to  the  tenant  farmer  the  rights  which  he  had  be- 
fore the  coming  of  the  British.  To-day  there  is  a  large 
land-owning  class,  and  two  classes  of  tenant,  one  class 
with  permanent,  inalienable  rights  to  his  land,  the  other 
a  tenant-at-will.  The  first  class  cannot  be  dispossessed 
for  any  cause.  He  is  a  permanent  tenant,  a  part  owner. 
This  class  forms  sixty-six  per  cent,  of  the  tenants.  The 
second  class,  the  tenant-at-will,  has  no  rights  in  the  land. 
He  is  usually  not  allowed  to  remain  in  possession  longer 
than  one  year.  If  he  remains  on  the  same  piece  of  land 
for  two  years,  he  gains  these  inalienable  rights,  hence 
the  landlord  keeps  him  moving  to  prevent  him  acquiring 
these  rights  of  permanency.  He  forms  thirty-three  per 
cent,  of  the  tenantry,  and  is  indescribably  poor  and  im- 
provident. 

The  government  maintains  a  settlement  department 
where  specially  trained  officers  are  sent  once  every  thirty 
years  into  a  district,  going  into  every  field  and  deter- 
mining in  the  presence  of  the  landlord  or  his  agent 
and  the  tenant  the  amount  which  the  permanent  tenant 
is  to  pay  to  the  landlord.  Of  this  sum  paid  by  the 
tenant  to  the  landlord  the  Imperial  government  takes 
fifty  per  cent,  as  land  revenue  while  eight  per  cent,  goes 


88  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

in  local  assessments  and  taxation.  Suppose  the  settle- 
ment officer  decides  that  a  given  field  shall  pay  annually 
$1.00  per  acre  rent  to  the  landlord,  the  government  gets 
fifty  per  cent,  of  the  dollar,  as  land  revenue.  That  par- 
ticular field  may  grow  a  crop  of  sugar  cane,  turmeric 
or  potatoes  where  the  net  profit  might  easily  be  from 
thirty  to  fifty  dollars  per  acre.  This  sum  fixed  by  the 
settlement  officer  is  the  amount  of  rent  which  the  tenant 
with  permanent  rights  must  pay  to  the  landlord.  It 
cannot  be  enhanced.  In  the  case  of  assessing  the  land 
of  the  tenant-at-will  the  settlement  officer  makes  no 
difference.  He  decides  the  land  revenue  as  though  all 
tenants  had  permanent  rights.  For  all  the  land  held 
under  cultivation  by  tenants-at-will,  the  landlord  can 
charge  as  much  rent  as  he  can  rack  out  of  the  tenant, 
but  he  pays  the  government  only  fifty  per  cent,  of  the 
amount  determined  by  the  settlement  officer.  For  some 
of  this  land  assessed  by  the  settlement  officer  to  pay  one 
dollar  per  acre  rent,  the  tenant-at-will  pays  as  high  as 
ten  dollars  per  acre.  The  government  only  gets  fifty  per 
cent,  of  the  assessed  rental  irrespective  of  the  rent  paid 
by  the  tenant  or  the  crop  grown.  The  mistake  in  the 
statement  that  the  government  takes  fifty  per  cent,  of 
the  produce  of  the  soil,  is  made  in  confusing  the  amount 
of  the  land-revenue  with  the  total  produce  of  the  soil, 
which  are  two  entirely  different  things.  The  land-reve- 
nue seldom  equals  ten  per  cent,  of  the  produce  of  the 
soil  and  of  that  ten  per  cent,  the  government  gets  fifty 
per  cent,  and  the  landlord  forty-two  per  cent.,  eight 
per  cent,  goes  into  local  uses. 

Again  the  government  is  criticized  for  taxing  salt,  a 
necessity.     The  reason  is,  of  course,  that  salt  is  the  one 


THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA       89 

thing  that  catches  everybody  in  India.  It  is  necessary 
for  the  government  to  raise  money  in  order  to  carry  on 
a  government.  If  it  does  not  do  it  in  one  way  it  must 
do  it  in  another.  In  1914  salt  could  usually  be  bought 
at  retail  in  India  in  the  villages  for  one  cent  a  pound 
or  one  dollar  a  hundred  pounds.  The  government  tax 
works  out  about  forty  cents  to  the  hundred  pounds  of 
salt.  A  man  would  use  about  one-half  ounce  of  salt  a 
day  or  about  one  pound  a  month,  twelve  pounds  a  year. 
In  eight  and  a  half  years  he  would  use  about  one  hun- 
dred pounds  of  salt  and  in  eight  and  a  half  years  the 
amount  of  salt  he  had  used  would  pay  the  government 
forty  cents  in  tax.  For  the  average  life-time  in  India 
the  salt  tax  does  not  cause  the  individual  to  pay  much 
more  than  one  dollar.  The  complaint  of  some  of  us  in 
India  is  not  that  the  government  taxes  too  much,  but 
that  it  does  not  tax  enough.  We  feel  that  if  it  had  taxed 
more  it  would  have  had  more  money  to  spend  on  educa- 
tion, sanitation,  irrigation,  roads  and  other  things  which 
India  sadly  lacks,  and  that  are  in  reality  investments  of 
public  funds  for  the  benefit  of  private  citizens,  and  that 
are  cumulative  in  their  effect  on  public  welfare. 

Much  is  said  of  the  fearful  drain  of  money  on  India  to 
support  the  army.  Before  the  war  about  eighty-five  thou- 
sand British  and  three  hundred  thousand  Indian  troops 
were  maintained  in  India  for  protection  of  the  Indian 
people.  The  Indian  civil  service  has  about  one  thousand 
British  men  in  it  and  the  other  services  four  or  five 
thousand.  These  highly  trained  men  give  the  best  years 
of  their  lives  for  what  may  be  considered  not  excessive 
pay  and  are  retired  on  a  pension.  Large  sums  of  money 
also  leave  India  to  pay  the  interest  charges  on  the  rail- 


90  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

roads  and  irrigation  schemes  and  other  public  utilities 
where  the  British  lent  their  credit  so  that  India  could 
borrow  money  cheaply  for  all  its  public  utilities.  In 
each  case  it  can  be  shown  that  whatever  interest-money 
India  pays  outside  of  India,  is  paid  for  value  received. 
Whether  one  nation  is  justified  in  ruling  another  is 
still  an  open  question,  and  one  can  fully  sympathize  with 
the  desire  of  the  educated  Indian  to  keep  his  own  house. 
The  British  government  has  itself  on  record  as  delib- 
erately planning  for  responsible  government  in  India  in 
the  very  immediate  future,  when  every  legislative  coun- 
cil will  have  a  majority  of  elected  Indian  members.  To 
bring  this  about  in  the  shortest  possible  time  needs  the 
very  heartiest  cooperation  and  good  will  between  the 
educated  Indian  and  the  British  government.  It  is  not 
by  constantly  remembering  the  mistakes  of  the  past  of 
either  side  and  brooding  over  them  in  a  spirit  of  ven- 
geance, but  it  is  in  looking  to  the  future  with  a  mutual 
trust  and  good  will  that  promises  the  speediest  ful- 
fillment of  India's  desire  for  the  fullest  realization  of 
her  own  genius  in  complete  responsible  government. 
Each  has  much  to  learn  from  the  other,  each  has  much 
to  give  to  the  other.  Some  may  ask,  if  the  Government 
of  India  is  so  good  why  is  there  any  need  for  missionary 
effort?  The  same  question  may  well  be  asked  in  the 
United  States  and  the  answer  is  the  same.  The  govern- 
ment does  not  claim  to  cover  the  whole  needs  of  the 
individual  or  social  life.  There  is  a  limit  to  the  causes 
for  which  public  money  may  be  spent.  There  is  a  cer- 
tain "soullessness"  to  government  which  handicaps  it 
and  prevents  its  laying  stress  on  certain  needs  of  the 
people.  It  stands  for  the  status  quo.  A  government 


THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA       91 

represents  the  people.  It  can  go  no  faster  than  they 
will  let  it.  The  history  of  reform  shows  an  individual 
in  advance  of  a  majority  of  his  fellows,  in  advance  of 
the  government  and  often  such  an  individual  is  a  thorn 
in  the  side  of  a  government  which  wants  peace.  A  gov- 
ernment is  not  equipped  to  experiment,  and  seldom  takes 
up  successful  experiment.  In  the  South  it  was  Arm- 
strong, Peabody,  Miss  Jeanes,  The  Rockefeller  Founda- 
tion and  others  who  have  advanced  and  compelled  the 
United  States  government  to  follow.  In  India  Chris- 
tian missions  stand  as  the  pioneers,  the  trail  blazers. 
In  most  educational  affairs  the  Indian  government  has 
followed  the  lead  of  the  missionary,  for  example  Carey 
and  Duff,  and  in  this  day  when  all  men  everywhere  are 
longing  for  the  time  when  men  shall  beat  their  swords 
into  plowshares  and  their  spears  into  pruning  hooks,  in 
the  day  when  agriculture  and  not  war  shall  be  supreme, 
it  seems  entirely  fitting  that  the  Christian  missionary 
should  maintain  his  place  by  demonstrating  his  fitness 
to  lead  India  out  of  economic  bondage  into  economic 
freedom,  which  is  at  the  very  foundation  of  all  other 
freedom.  Christian  missions  are  spending  about  five 
million  dollars  on  education  in  India.  "India  in  1919," 
page  133,  says,  "The  contributions  from  missionary 
bodies  and  from  charitable  endowments  is  of  rather 
greater  importance  than  is  indicated  by  its  financial 
equivalent.  Missionary  bodies  very  often  succeed  in 
enlisting  the  services  of  devoted  men  whose  ability  is 
quite  out  of  proportion  to  the  remuneration  which  they 
are  content  to  accept.  Indeed  Indian  education,  as  a 
whole,  owes  to  missionary  bodies  a  debt  which  it  is 
very  difficult  to  estimate  with  justice." 


92 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 


Thus  the  government  acknowledges  its  debt  to  the  mis- 
sionary and  admits  he  has  a  place  in  the  full,  rounded, 
ordered  development  of  India  into  a  self-governing 
nation. 

General  Statement  of  the  Revenue  and  Expenditure  charged  to 
Revenue,  of  the  Government  of  India,  in  India  and  in  England. 

REVENUE 


Accounts, 
1917-18 


Revised 

Estimate, 

1918-19 


Budget 

Estimate, 

1919-20 


Principal  Head  of  Revenue. 
Land    Revenue    

f 
21,607,246 

£ 
20  805  900 

f 
22  686  400 

Opium    

3,078  903 

3  229  000 

3  056  200 

Salt   

5,499,487 

4,216,300 

3  914  300 

Stamps   

5,727,522 

5  916  500 

6  097  100 

Excise   

10,161,706 

11,567,900 

12,153  300 

Customs    

11,036,588 

12,403,200 

13,352,400 

Income  Tax  

6,308,104 

1,320,800 

13,544,900 

Other  Heads   

3,885,177 

4,088,000 

4,568  900 

Total  Principal  Heads  

67,304,733 

69,547,600 

79  383  500 

Interest    

2,170,108 

3,842,900 

3,637  400 

Posts   and   Telegraphs  

4,616,690 

5,322,900 

5,716,800 

Mint    

517,401 

1,676,800 

1,356,500 

Receipts  by  Civil  Departs.  .  . 
Miscellaneous    

1,935,364 
4,868,356 

2,086,600 
5,924,300 

1,957,500 
2,557,400 

Railways  :  Net  Receipts  .  .  . 
Irrigation     

24,141,708 
5,063,879 

25,347,400 
5,402,200 

21,372,900 
5,511,900 

Other  Public  Works  

323,599 

321,900 

323,000 

Military  Receipts    

1,720,509 

1,713,600 

1,587,300 

Total    Revenue   . 

112.662.347 

121.186.200 

123.404.200 

Charts   quoted   from   "India   in    1919."    Taken   from   between 
pages  57  and  58. 


THE  BRITISH  GOVERNMENT  IN  INDIA      93 
EXPENDITURE 


Accounts, 
1917-18 


Revised 

Estimate, 

1918-19 


Budget 

Estimate, 

1919-20 


Direct     Demands     on     the 
Revenues    

£ 
9,854,695 

£ 
11,669,900 

£ 
11,293,300 

Interest    

7,328,169 

7,866,600 

7,763,500 

Posts  and  Telegraphs  

3,567,730 

4,116,500 

4,580,200 

Mint    

167,382 

267,000 

284,500 

Salaries    and     expenses    of 
Civil  Departs  

20,855,368 

24,233,500 

24,549,100 

Miscellaneous  Civil  Charges 
Famine  Relief  and  Insurance 
Railways:  Interest  and  Mis- 
cellaneous Charges  

5,918,797 
1,000,000 

14,227,385 

6,257,400 
1,000,000 

14,154,000 

6,139,100 
1,789,100 

14,468,900 

Irrigation  

3,784,838 

3,988,300 

4,071,100 

Other  Public  Works  
Military  Services   

5,048,294 
30,763,650 

5,582,100 
45,639,600 

6,932,700 
42,782,300 

Total      Expenditure,      "Im- 
perial and  Provincial"  .  . 

102,516,218 

124,774,900 

124,653,800 

Add  —  Provincial   Surpluses  : 
that  is,  portion  of  allot- 
ments to  Provincial  Gov- 
ernments   not     spent    by 
them   in   the  vear  

2,256,623 

1,091,000 

Deduct  —  Provincial  Deficits  : 
that   is,    portion    of    Pro- 
vincial   Expenditures    de- 
frayed    from     Provincial 
Balances  

197,568 

111,500 

1,918,200 

Total    Expenditure    charged 
to  Revenue   

104,575,273 

125,754,400 

122,735,600 

Surplus    

8,087,074 

4,568,200 

668,600 

Total 

112.662.347 

121.186.200 

123.404.200 

"And  when  the  queen  of  Sheba  had  seen  all  Solomon's  wisdom, 
and  the  house  that  he  had  built,  And  the  meat  of  his  table,  and 
the  sitting  of  his  servants,  and  the  attendance  of  his  ministers, 
and  their  apparel,  and  his  cupbearers,  and  his  ascent  by  which 
he  went  up  unto  the  house  of  the  Lord;  there  was  no  more 
spirit  in  her.  And  she  said  to  the  king,  It  was  a  true  report 
that  I  heard  in  mine  own  land  of  thy  acts  and  of  thy  wisdom. 
Howbeit  I  believed  not  the  words,  until  I  came,  and  mine 
eyes  had  seen  it:  and,  behold,  the  half  was  not  told  me." 

I  Kings  10:4-7. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WORK  IN  NATIVE  STATES 

About  one-third  of  the  area  of  India  but  not  one-third 
of  the  population  enjoys  home  rule,  that  is,  it  is  not 
directly  under  the  British,  but  is  ruled  over  by  Indian 
kings  or  Rajahs.  Within  the  native  kingdoms  the  policy 
of  the  British  is  to  interfere  as  little  as  possible.  In 
general  it  is  only  when  negotiations  with  other  states  or 
foreign  governments  are  being  carried  on,  that  the  Brit- 
ish resident  or  adviser  has  anything  to  do,  except  in 
cases  of  gross  and  palpable  misrule  when  the  British 
government  may  suspend  or  dethrone  the  incompetent 
king  and  put  up  some  other  member  of  the  ruling  family 
who  will  give  better  government. 

The  size  of  these  kingdoms  varies.  Hyderabad,  a  Mo- 
hammedan state,  is  82,000  square  miles  in  extent,  slightly 
larger  than  Minnesota,  with  a  population  of  13,000,000, 
a  large  majority  of  whom  are  little  better  than  serfs. 

Jodhpur,  famous  as  having  given  to  the  world  the 
Jodhpur  riding  breeches  which  polo  players  and  other 
horsemen  wear,  is  40,000  square  miles  in  extent,  about 
the  size  of  Ohio,  mostly  desert.  In  Jodhpur  are  the 
famous  white  marble  quarries  from  which  the  marble 
was  taken  across  the  desert  to  build  the  Taj  Mahal  at 
Agra,  and  how  it  was  transported  still  remains  a  mys- 
tery. 

Mysore,  where  the  famous  Kolar  gold  mines  are,  is 

95 


96  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

38,000  square  miles  in  extent.  Mysore  is  a  very  pro- 
gressive state.  Large  hydro-electric  power  is  being  de- 
veloped and  used  to  foster  industry.  It  has  a  well  or- 
ganized department  of  agriculture. 

Gwalior  is  28,000  square  miles  in  extent,  population 
3,000,000,  a  country  of  marvelous  possibility.  The  ruling 
family  is  Mahratta,  one  of  the  most  famous  warrior 
castes  of  Western  India.  As  most  of  the  state  was  won 
by  conquests  it  is  scattered  and  not  in  one  continuous 
tract.  It  lies  in  larger  or  smaller  patches  roughly  be- 
tween the  Nerbudda  and  Chambal  rivers.  It  has  some 
beautiful  scenery.  Water  power  and  irrigation  are  be- 
ing developed  on  a  large  scale.  A  tiger  population  of 
about  four  hundred,  with  leopard,  panther,  not- 
enumerated  black  bear,  black  buck  and  deer  and  wild 
pig  in  abundance. 

Bikanir  is  25,000  square  miles,  one  solid  block  of 
desert.  About  one-third  in  the  northern  part  will  soon 
be  under  irrigation.  I  have  never  seen  richer  land  and 
water  will  transform  it  into  a  wonderful  garden  spot. 
These  are  the  largest  and  most  important  of  the  native 
states.  In  all,  there  are  about  seven  hundred,  ranging 
from  larger  than  Minnesota  down  to  the  size  of  an  Ohio 
farm. 

Colonel  Sir  James  Roberts,  Surgeon  to  Lord  Hardinge, 
the  Viceroy,  visited  the  leper  asylum  in  company  with 
his  old  college  classmate,  Colonel  Hudson,  the  superin- 
tendent of  the  Naini  Jail  which  is  right  next  to  the  leper 
asylum.  Sir  James  was  much  interested  in  the  garden- 
ing which  the  lepers  were  doing.  In  order  to  give  him 
more  information,  Colonel  Hudson  was  kind  enough  to 
invite  me  to  dinner  one  hot  April  evening.  The  dinner 
hour  is  eight.  We  sat  on  the  lawn  and  talked  until 
nearly  three  in  the  morning  when  Sir  James  said,  "When 


WORK  IN  NATIVE  STATES  97 

Colonel  Hudson  was  telling  me  about  your  agricultural 
work  I  thought  you  were  just  a  missionary  who  had 
learned  some  new  way  of  spending  money,  but  I  believe 
that  you  have  got  hold  of  something  that  can  be  of 
great  help  to  India.  If  I  could  make  arrangements  for 
you,  would  you  go  to  a  number  of  the  native  states  and 
give  a  few  lectures  in  each  one,  telling  of  the  possibilities 
for  the  improvement  of  agriculture  in  India,  and  how 
improved  agriculture  is  at  the  very  foundation  of  any  im- 
provement in  the  material  prosperity  of  India;  that  it 
is  out  of  India's  fertile  acres,  properly  cultivated,  that 
must  come  the  crops  that  can  be  sold  to  provide  the 
money  for  food,  clothing,  schools,  libraries,  hospitals, 
museums,  universities  and  all  of  the  amenities  of  civiliza- 
tion?" I  said  I  would  gladly  go  if  I  could  be  of  any 
service.  He  arranged  the  trip.  I  spoke  at  Dhar,  Dewas- 
Senior,  Rutlam,  Jaora,  Indore.  The  lectures  were 
usually  given  in  the  palace  with  the  Maharajah  as  pre- 
siding officer,  with  the  nobles  of  the  state,  and  all  his 
officials  as  audience.  At  Indore,  the  Hon.  Mr.  Tucker, 
Agent  to  the  Governor-general,  was  the  presiding  officer. 
In  each  case  the  Maharajah  had  called  in  all  his  officers 
who  understood  English.  I  lectured  and  was  much 
gratified  at  the  great  interest  shown  in  agricultural 
things.  Since  that  time  a  number  of  these  states  have 
put  in  their  own  departments  of  agriculture,  most  of 
which  are  doing  excellent  work.  At  the  invitation  of  the 
late  Maharajah,  who  was  a  young  man.  not  yet  twenty 
years  old  and  who  had  been  at  an  English  public  school, 
I  went  to  Jodhpur,  where  an  audience  of  five  thousand 
were  gathered.  There  had  been  little  rain  for  over  a 
year  and  a  half.  The  cattle  were  dying  by  the  thousand 
and  the  people  were  at  their  wits'  end.  The  Mahara- 


98  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

jah  of  Bikanir,  one  of  India's  representatives  at  the 
Peace  Conference  in  Paris,  a  cultured  gentleman,  a  great 
orator,  a  forward  looking  statesman,  asked  me  to  advise 
him  in  agricultural  matters.  I  was  invited  to  lecture  in 
a  number  of  other  states  but  returned  to  America  on  a 
money  raising  campaign  in  1914,  returning  to  India  in 
March,  1915. 

When  we  got  to  Bombay  letters  were  awaiting  me  from 
Dr.  Janvier,  the  principal  of  the  College,  and  from  the 
officers  of  an  Indian  state  government  urging  me  to  go 
immediately  to  the  state  to  confer  with  the  Maharajah. 
As  soon  as  I  had  seen  my  wife  and  children  safely  set- 
tled in  our  bungalow  at  Allahabad  I  went  over  to  this 
country  where  I  found  a  very  great  interest  aroused  in 
agricultural  improvement  very  largely  through  the  con- 
versation of  Sir  James  Roberts  with  His  Highness.  The 
Maharajah  sent  me  to  stay  in  his  guest  house,  an  old 
palace,  fitted  up  for  the  entertainment  of  his  guests, 
and  said  to  be  the  most  beautiful  guest  house  in  India, 
certainly  the  most  beautiful  I  have  seen.  He  summoned 
me  to  the  palace,  jumped  in  his  motor  and  took  me  and 
one  of  my  colleagues  along  to  a  quiet  little  summer-house 
palace  in  a  garden  where  he  could  be  uninterrupted. 
For  several  hours  he  poured  out  to  me  his  heart's  de- 
sire for  the  improvement  of  the  3,000,000  of  his  sub- 
jects, only  two  per  cent,  of  whom  are  literate,  most  of 
them  poor  and  backward.  The  Maharajah  is  one  of 
India's  leading  Drinces,  and  an  exceedingly  wise  coun- 
selor. He  has  helped  the  British  in  many  ways  that 
have  been  made  public  and  in  a  great  many  which  the 
time  has  not  yet  come  to  disclose.  He  bought  a  great 
ocean  liner  and  transformed  it  into  a  beautiful  hospital- 
ship.  Thousands  of  Indian  and  British  wounded  soldiers 


WORK  IN  NATIVE  STATES  99 

lift  up  hearts  in  gratitude  to  the  Maharajah  for  the  gen- 
erous service  rendered  by  this  ship.  He  equipped  and 
maintained  a  hospital  in  equatorial  Africa.  He  sent  all 
kinds  of  comforts  to  the  troops.  His  own  army,  with 
equipment,  was  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  British  and 
maintained  by  him  all  during  the  war  and  was  out  of  In- 
dia for  a  good  part  of  the  war.  His  generosity  was  gen- 
uine and  very  far  reaching.  His  example  did  a  great 
deal  to  keep  India  loyal  all  through  the  dark  days  of  the 
war.  When  the  British  government  was  very  short  of 
gold  and  silver  coins  the  Maharajah  let  them  have  large 
amounts  from  his  state  treasury  which  helped  to  avert 
a  financial  panic.  He  is  said  to  keep  more  small  change 
on  hand  than  any  other  person  on  earth. 

The  Maharajah  is  not  only  a  generous  ruler  but  ex- 
ceedingly wise  and  sagacious  and  generally  takes  the 
long  view.  When  he  came  to  the  throne  his  state  was 
one  of  the  most  precarious,  agriculturally,  in  the  whole 
of  India,  and,  because  of  the  uncertain  rainfall,  more 
subject  to  famine  than  almost  any  other  part  of  India. 
He  called  in  the  leading  irrigation  engineer  of  India 
then  at  the  height  of  his  fame.  This  engineer  spent 
several  years  in  working  out  an  irrigation  program 
which  would  protect  the  state  in  years  when  the  rain- 
fall was  deficient  or  entirely  lacking.  This  program  is 
being  carried  out  very  successfully  by  an  Indian  engi- 
neer. This  program  has  involved  the  building  of  enor- 
mous storage  reservoirs  and  the  laying  of  hundreds  of 
miles  of  canals.  The  whole  has  cost  approximately 
eleven  million  dollars  and  the  end  is  not  yet.  The  pro- 
gram is  still  going  on.  When  this  program  is  completed 
this  state  will  then  be  the  most  secure  of  all  the  Indian 
states,  instead  of  one  of  the  most  precarious.  The  main 


100  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

line  of  the  Great  Indian  Peninsular  Railway  passes 
through  this  state.  In  addition  there  are  two  hundred 
and  seventy-five  miles  of  two-foot-gauge  feeder  rail- 
way which  has  brought  prosperity  to  districts  formerly 
inaccessible.  About  six  hundred  miles  of  the  Grand 
Trunk  road  from  Bombay  to  Delhi  is  within  this  state 
and  is  kept  in  first  class  condition  by  the  state  govern- 
ment. This  stretch  is  one  of  the  finest  roads  I  have 
ever  motored  over.  In  addition  there  are  several  hun- 
dred miles  of  excellent  macadam  feeder  roads  and  His 
Highness'  program  calls  for  much  more.  There  is 
nothing  like  a  good  road  to  bring  prosperity  to  a  back- 
ward territory.  When  the  Maharajah's  program  is  com- 
pleted his  state  will  be  well  protected  and  accessible. 
With  the  splendid  irrigation  and  transportation  facili- 
ties, the  next  step  naturally  was  the  improvement  of 
agriculture.  The  Maharajah  gave  me  his  ideas  and  laid 
down  an  outline  of  his  plans.  I  was  to  fill  in  all  details, 
make  a  budget  and  check  up  and  see  that  the  scheme 
was  workable. 

When  the  scheme  was  on  paper  and  had  been  approved 
by  the  Maharajah  he  asked  me  who  was  going  to  carry 
it  out.  I  told  him  that  I  considered  the  possibilities  so 
great  that  I  thought  he  ought  to  go  to  the  British  gov- 
ernment and  get  the  very  best  agriculturist  they  had  in 
their  service.  There  were  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  acres  of  land  in  his  state  which  would  have 
been  worth  in  the  corn  belt  of  America  one  hundred  and 
fifty  to  three  hundred  dollars  per  acre  but  not  yielding 
to  him  five  cents  per  acre  land  revenue.  It  was  worth 
a  good  man  to  bring  this  under  cultivation  and  populate 
it  with  prosperous  farmers.  His  Highness  pointed  out 
that  owing  to  the  war,  nearly  every  British  officer  that 


WORK  IN  NATIVE  STATES  101 

could  be  spared  had  gone  to  the  front  and  those  that  re- 
mained were  carrying  double  burdens.  Under  the  cir- 
cumstances he  said  that  it  would  not  be  fair  to  ask  the 
British  for  an  officer.  Finally  he  said, ' '  You  have  drawn 
up  the  scheme,  why  don't  you  carry  it  out?"  I  said 
there  were  serious  objections  as  I  was  a  Christian  mis- 
sionary and  being  a  director  of  agriculture  was  hardly 
in  line  with  my  work.  The  Maharajah  told  me  that  he 
had  cabled  to  our  Missionary  Board  in  New  York  ask- 
ing them  if  they  would  allow  me  to  act  as  Director  of 
Agriculture  for  him  and  the  answer  he  had  received  was, 
that  if  the  mission,  to  which  I  belonged,  and  I  personally 
were  willing,  the  Board  had  no  objection.  Facing  me 
with  this  he  said,  "Now  your  objections  are  removed,  so 
resign  from  the  mission  and  give  your  whole  time  to  my 
state."  I  pointed  out  that  owing  to  the  war  our  Insti- 
tute had  also  suffered,  that  we  were  short  handed  and 
heavily  in  debt  and  I  had  obligations  to  Allahabad  that 
I  could  not  possibly  throw  off  on  somebody  else,  so  we 
finally  agreed  that  one  of  my  colleagues,  an  Agricultural 
Engineer,  and  I,  as  Director,  were  each  to  give  eleven 
weeks  each  year  of  our  time  to  work  in  the  state.  For 
this  service  the  Maharajah  paid  the  college  over  seven 
thousand  dollars  a  year,  none  of  which  we  touched  per- 
sonally. He  then  provided  us  with  traveling  expenses 
in  the  state  and  with  a  budget  and  equipment  to  do  our 
work.  In  addition  to  an  office  staff  I  was  given  a  motor 
and  adequate  tent  equipage  to  travel  over  the  state. 
The  Agricultural  Engineer  was  given  funds  for  agricul- 
ture machinery,  for  a  work-shop,  show-room  and  an  ex- 
perimental laboratory  for  farm  machinery.  The  budget 
sanctioned  was  most  carefully  drawn  up  and  while  not 
allowing  for  any  extravagances  was  adequate  to  enable  a 


102  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

most  constructive  piece  of  work  to  be  done.  The  con- 
tract was  signed  for  three  years.  It  was  recognized  by 
both  the  Maharajah  and  the  Mission  that  as  a  temporary 
war  measure,  such  divided  time  was  justified  but  as  a 
permanency  it  would  not  be  wise.  The  work  to  be  done 
in  the  state  called  for  a  full  time  officer.  In  the  three 
years  I  did  my  best  to  establish  a  department  and  get 
together  a  properly  qualified  staff,  working  smoothly. 
This  was  about  all  one  could  do  with  the  interruptions 
and  disappointments  caused  by  the  war,  that  prevented 
us  getting  out  American  helpers  and  American  agri- 
cultural machinery.  When  I  came  home  on  furlough, 
August,  1919,  one  of  my  colleagues  took  over  the 
job  of  officiating  Director  and  another  was  put  in  charge 
of  the  second  experimental  and  demonstration  farm  at 
the  southern  capital  of  the  state. 

The  scheme  finally  approved  by  His  Highness,  called 
for,  first,  the  building  of  a  research  laboratory ;  the  lay- 
ing out  of  an  experimental  and  demonstration  plot  of 
about  one  hundred  acres  at  the  capital  city.  The  equip- 
ing  of  the  laboratory  was  done  by  one  of  my  colleagues. 
Second,  the  building  and  equipping  of  an  agricultural 
machinery  show-room,  work-shop,  and  experimental  lab- 
oratory for  farm  machinery  and  thirdly,  the  establish- 
ment of  demonstration  villages  over  the  state.  The 
state  is  divided  into  eleven  districts  or  counties  each 
one  having  a  county  headquarters  where  the  government 
offices,  courts,  police  and  treasuries  are  located.  It 
was  the  Maharajah's  idea  that,  at,  or  near,  every  county 
heaquarters  a  bankrupt  village  should  be  taken  over  by 
the  Agricultural  Department  and  transformed  into  a 
model  demonstration  village.  Each  village  was  to  be  in 
charge  of  an  Indian  who  had  had  special  training  in 


WORK  IN  NATIVE  STATES  103 

agriculture  and  who  was  to  make  use  of  the  village  labor. 
It  was  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  poor  farmers  of 
the  state  that  His  Highness  started  the  department ;  not 
to  allow  outsiders  to  come  in  to  exploit  it.  Owing  to 
the  fact  that  there  are  such  large  areas  of  uncultivated 
land  in  the  state,  over  six  hundred  thousand  acres  of 
excellent  land  lying  idle,  the  Maharajah  thought  it  best 
to  get  labor-saving  machinery.  About  one  million  dol- 
lars was  set  aside  for  this  purpose  and  orders  were 
placed  in  America,  but  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  United 
States  went  into  the  war  most  of  our  orders  were  can- 
celed and  we  received  very  little  machinery.  I  recently 
heard  from  a  firm  of  tractor  builders  in  America  that 
they  have  shipped  this  summer  fourteen  of  the  tractors 
to  the  Maharajah  and  I  think  before  long  the  whole 
million  dollars'  worth  of  agricultural  machinery  will 
have  been  sent  out.  This  is  good  business  for  the  manu- 
facturer and  of  very  great  value  to  India.  Better  farm 
tools  and  implements  are  at  the  very  foundation  of  im- 
proved agriculture  for  India.  With  his  present  tools 
and  implements  the  Indian  farmer  has  gone  as  far  as  he 
can  go.  In  case  of  failure  of  the  rains  or  any  other  un- 
toward circumstance  he  is  compelled  to  sit  in  helpless 
inactivity.  The  ground  is  too  hard  for  him  to  work. 
His  little  plow  can  not  even  scratch  the  hard  ground. 
The  American  plow  behind  a  tractor  enables  this  hard 
ground  to  be  properly  opened  up  and  broken  down  so 
that  when  the  rain  falls  instead  of  most  of  the  water 
running  off,  most  of  it  soaks  into  the  ground  and,  if 
the  ground  is  then  harrowed,  is  stored  in  the  ground 
until  the  crops  need  it,  just  as  in  the  case  of  our  "dry 
farming"  in  the  west  of  America.  This  deep  plowing 
which  turns  under  the  manure  and  other  organic  matter 


104  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

that  otherwise  would  be  lost  and  which  the  soil  of  India 
needs  so  much,  is  very  important.  The  agricultural 
engineer  working  in  the  Maharajah's  agricultural  ex- 
perimental work-shop,  devised  a  little  plow  made  of 
steel.  It  is  simple  and  cheap  in  construction;  it  can  be 
easily  repaired  by  the  Indian  blacksmith;  it  is  of  suf- 
ficiently light  draft  for  the  small  under-nourished  In- 
dian oxen  to  draw  it.  This  plow  is  one  of  the  most  use- 
ful inventions  for  India  that  has  been  devised  within 
the  last  one  hundred  years.  His  idea  was  to  work  out 
a  complete  set  of  improved  farm  implements  that  will 
be  within  reach  of  the  poor  small  farmer. 

When  the  research  laboratory  and  equipment  were 
ready,  through  the  kind  offices  of  Mr.  Bernard  Coven- 
try, formerly  head  of  all  government  agricultural  work 
in  India,  we  were  able  to  secure  for  the  state  the  very 
valuable  cooperation  and  advice  of  some  of  the  best 
British  Agricultural  officers,  notably  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Howard. 

Three  very  busy  years  were  spent  in  this  state  and 
when  I  left  the  program  laid  down  by  His  Highness  was 
still  a  long  way  from  completion  but  the  department  was 
organized  and  a  going  concern.  In  addition  to  giving 
so  much  of  my  time  in  an  official  capacity  to  this  state, 
I  was  called  upon  for  advice  which  1  was  very  glad  to 
give,  from  other  Indian  rulers,  notably  Their  Highnesses, 
the  Maharajahs  of  Bikanir,  Jodhpur,  Benares,  Alwar, 
Jamnagar.  I  was  also  advising  the  great  Central  Hindu 
University  at  Benares  in  their  agricultural  affairs  and 
I  felt  in  all  this  work  a  great  opportunity  to  help  India's 
poor  and  needy  in  a  way  that  they  could  appreciate,  in 
a  language  they  could  read  and  understand. 


"And,  behold,  there  came  a  leper  and  worshipped  him,  saying, 
Lord,  if  thou  wilt,  thou  canst  make  me  clean.  And  Jesus  put 
forth  his  hand,  and  touched  him  saying,  I  will;  be  thou  clean. 
And  immediately  his  leprosy  was  cleansed."  Math.  8 : 2-3. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION 

During  the  Christmas  vacation  of  1903  I  was  sitting  in 
a  Mission  prayer  meeting  in  the  Mission  house  at  Katra 
at  Allahabad.  The  missionaries  were  planning  for  and 
praying  about  their  work.  One  of  the  older  mission- 
aries turned  to  me  and  said,  "It  is  always  the  custom 
for  the  new  man  to  have  charge  of  the  blind  asylum  and 
the  leper  asylum  in  addition  to  his  regular  work,  so, 
Higginbottom,  there  is  your  job."  He  smiled  and  spoke 
with  a  great  deal  of  confidence.  If  I  had  answered  him 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment  it  would  have  been  without 
the  smile,  but  no  less  confidence,  and  a  flat  contradic- 
tion. I  did  not  think  that  caring  for  lepers  was  my  job. 
I  remembered  my  first  Sunday  evening  in  Calcutta,  after 
having  placed  my  goods  in  the  hotel  from  the  boat,  I 
went  out  and  stood  on  the  corner  of  one  of  Calcutta's 
main  thoroughfares  and  while  I  stood  almost  entranced 
by  the  wondrous  surging  tide  of  oriental  life,  to  me 
so  new  and  strange,  passing  before  me,  I  was  interrupted 
by  hearing  a  thin,  squeaky  voice  saying,  "Bakhshish, 
Bakhshish,  Sahib."  I  turned  and  close  up  to  my  face 
were  a  pair  of  stumps  of  hands.  Instinctively  I  knew 
it  was  a  leper.  I  had  the  idea  that  the  greater  the  dis- 
tance between  us  in  the  shortest  possible  time  the  better 
for  me.  I  had  not  thought  of  lepers  as  belonging  to 

1 06 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         107 

our  modern  world.  I  had  heard  of  them  in  the  Old 
Testament  days  and  in  the  time  of  our  Lord.  I  thought 
they  were  something  that  the  world  had  outgrown.  So 
to  be  told  that  caring  for  these  people  was  to  be  part 
of  my  work  was  somewhat  of  a  shock.  As  I  sat  there  in 
the  prayer  meeting  and  thought  the  thing  through,  I 
had  to  admit  that  there  were  lepers  in  this  modern  day, 
that  leprosy  was  an  awful  disease,  that  being  lepers  they 
were  sick,  and  as  sick  needed  somebody  to  care  for  them. 
If  somebody  must  care  for  them  why  not  I  be  that 
somebody?  So  before  the  prayer  meeting  was  over  I 
said,  "All  right,  if  you  think  I  am  fit  for  that  job  I  am 
willing  to  tackle  it. ' ' 

I  went  to  the  blind  asylum  and  saw  fifty  blind  and 
helpless  cripples  that  were  being  cared  for  at  the  rate 
of  one  dollar  per  month  each.  I  looked  after  them  for 
four  years  but  could  do  little  for  them.  The  blind 
asylum  has  been  turned  over  to  the  Mission.  India  has 
a  great  many  blind  and  no  class  of  people  in  India  is 
having  less  done  for  them  than  these  poor  unfortunates. 
There  is  urgent  need  that  somebody  or  some  organiza- 
tion take  up  their  cause. 

A  few  days  after  the  prayer  meeting  Dr.  Arthur  H. 
Ewing  said  to  me,  "Well,  have  you  got  your  nerve  with 
you?"  I  said,  "Yes,  I  think  so,  why?"  He  said, 
"Well  I  think  you  will  need  it  because  we  are  going 
over  to  the  leper  asylum. ' '  We  jumped  on  our  bicycles, 
rode  out  of  the  college  campus,  across  the  Jumna  bridge. 
About  a  mile  beyond  the  end  of  the  bridge,  upon  that 
sun-baked  Indian  plain,  he  pointed  out  a  lot  of  ram- 
shackle, tumble-down  mud  huts.  He  said,  "That  is  the 
leper  asylum."  As  I  caught  my  first  view  of  it  I 
thought  of  all  the  unprepossessing  institutions  I  had  ever 


108  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

seen  that  was  surely  the  worst.  It  was  only  a  few  min- 
utes until  we  were  in  the  asylum  and  Dr.  Ewing  was 
showing  me  around,  introducing  me  to  the  inmates  and 
explaining  my  work  to  me. 

What  I  saw  on  this  first  trip  through  the  Leper  Asy- 
lum was  so  awful  and  overwhelming  that  I  had  fully 
made  up  my  mind  to  tell  Dr.  Ewing  that  I  did  not  feel 
cut  out  for  the  job,  that  I  considered  the  task  would  be 
very  much  better  done  if  he  continued  to  do  it  rather 
than  turn  it  over  to  me.  When  I  got  back  to  the  gate 
I  took  hold  of  my  bicycle  and  was  taking  what  I  thought 
was  my  farewell  look  into  that  unlovely  place,  when  I 
happened  to  catch  sight  of  an  old  man  lying  flat  on  his 
back  in  the  dust  in  the  shadow  of  a  tree.  He  had  on 
only  a  very  small  loin-cloth.  You  could  see  every  rib. 
His  breath  was  coming  with  very  great  difficulty.  What 
were  left  of  his  hands  and  feet  were  all  festered  and 
unbandaged  and  the  flies  were  thick-clustered  on  the 
open  wounds.  He  was  altogether  the  most  loathsome 
and  repulsive  human  being  I  had  ever  seen.  Yet  as  I 
looked  at  him,  it  came  over  me  that,  after  all,  he  was  my 
brother ;  in  that  unlovely,  broken  body  there  was  a  heart 
that  would  respond  to  love  and  sympathy  as  would  any 
human  heart,  and  more  than  all  that,  in  that  poor  old 
disease-rotted  body  there  was  a  soul  for  which  my  Lord 
had  shed  His  blood,  and  who  was  I,  that  I  should  leave 
him  just  because  his  need  was  so  desperate  ?  So  I  never 
told  Dr.  Ewing  that  I  would  not  care  for  the  lepers.  I 
took  hold  of  the  job  and  found  that  the  asylum  was 
supported  by  the  Allahabad  Charitable  Association,  an 
organization  trying  to  do  a  great  work  on  entirely  in- 
sufficient funds.  It  was  responsible  for  the  blind,  and 
the  cripples  in  their  asylum,  for  a  number  of  indigent 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         109 

Indian  Christian  widows,  for  a  number  of  poor  Euro- 
pean and  Anglo-Indians;  altogether  too  much  for  its 
meagre  income.  The  result  was  that  the  lepers  were  liv- 
ing in  houses  not  fit  for  human  habitation  with  insuf- 
ficient food  and  clothing.  Everything  the  leper  got  had 
to  come  out  of  one  dollar  a  month  for  each  leper,  food, 
clothing,  medicines  and  attendance.  The  result  was  that 
if  any  leper  had  feet  enough  left  to  walk  on  and  strength 
enough  to  walk  he  considered  that  he  could  do  so  much 
better  begging  than  he  could  in  the  asylum  that  he  went 
out  to  beg  in  the  Bazaar.  I  decided  that,  in  the  condi- 
tion it  was,  the  institution  had  no  right  to  exist.  It 
should  either  be  mended  or  ended. 

There  is  an  organization  that  is  known  as  the  Mission 
to  Lepers,  founded  in  1874  by  a  missionary  to  India,  Mr. 
Wellesley  C.  Bailey.  The  operations  of  this  mission 
have  gradually  extended  until  now  it  has  charge  of 
asylums  in  every  continent,  about  eighty  in  all.  The 
Mission  to  Lepers  came  along  and  said  to  the  Charitable 
Association,  "Turn  the  asylum  over  to  us  and  we  will 
be  entirely  responsible  for  it  and  spend  more  money 
than  you  are  able  to.  We  will  also  rebuild  and  give 
habitable  quarters  to  the  lepers."  The  transfer  was 
made  and  the  Mission  to  Lepers  asked  the  Presbyterian 
Mission  if  I  might  continue  as  Superintendent.  The 
Mission  gave  its  consent.  The  Mission  to  Lepers  asked 
me  what  my  plans  were.  I  went  to  study  the  best  asy- 
lums in  India,  got  a  number  of  ideas  from  each  one  and 
laid  out  a  scheme  for  the  rebuilding  and  management  of 
the  asylum.  As  these  asylums  are  all  voluntary  it  is 
essential  that  the  management  be  such  as  to  make  the 
asylum  more  attractive  to  the  leper  than  begging  or 
wandering  about  the  country.  The  leper  can  not  be 


110  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

treated  as  a  criminal  and  be  put  on  prison  diet.  The 
lepers  so  often  have  said  to  me,  "Sahib,  we  are  not 
criminals,  we  are  only  unfortunate."  The  food  for  a 
leper,  who  is  a  sick  man,  must  be  better  than  the  food  for 
the  prisoner  in  jail.  When  the  Mission  to  Lepers  took 
over  the  asylum  we  started  our  building  program  and 
immediately  displaced  the  miserable  old  mud  huts  with 
brick  and  mortar  structures  having  good  roofs  with  iron 
battens  instead  of  bamboos,  and  good  French  pattern 
tile  instead  of  the  small  country  tile.  The  hospital  was 
built  with  two  wards  for  men  and  one  for  women  and 
a  dispensary  properly  equipped,  a  store  room,  two  large 
tanks  in  the  asylum  for  the  washermen  to  wash  the 
clothing.  Heretofore  the  washermen  had  taken  the 
lepers'  clothing  down  to  the  river  to  the  regular  "Dhobi 
Ghat"  where  all  the  city  clothing  is  washed,  much  to 
the  danger  of  the  general  public.  When  the  lepers  were 
comfortably  housed  and  the  hospital  built  and  running, 
we  next  secured,  about  a  mile  away,  a  home  for  the  un- 
tainted children  of  the  lepers  where  the  children  could 
be  kept  apart  from  their  parents,  trained,  educated  and 
given  their  chance  in  life.  An  Indian  widow  gave  the 
site.  After  this  the  next  building  to  be  built  was  the 
church  and  instead  of  having  beautiful,  stained-glass 
windows  we  have  great  big  arches  with  chicken-wire 
screens.  This  is  to  make  certain  that  the  ventilation 
is  good.  My  wife  and  I  like  to  be  present  for  the  Sun- 
day morning  services.  With  a  congregation  of  from 
three  to  five  hundred  lepers,  unless  the  ventilation  is 
good,  one  is  apt  to  be  in  distress. 

The  Mission  to  Lepers  placed  at  my  disposal  twenty- 
five  dollars  a  year  for  each  adult  leper  and  twenty  dol- 
lars for  each  child.  Out  of  that,  all  food,  clothing,  medi- 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         111 

cines,  servants,  had  to  be  provided.  Even  with  the  en- 
larged sum  of  two  dollars  per  month  for  each  leper,  I 
had  my  troubles  in  keeping  the  lepers  reasonably  well 
fed,  and  decently  clothed  with  proper  medicine  and  ser- 
vice. So  many  of  the  lepers  have  lost  all  their  fingers, 
sometimes  the  whole  hand  clear  back  to  the  wrist,  that 
it  is  obviously  impossible  for  such  a  man  to  do  his  own 
cooking,  so  I  get  some  other  leper  to  do  the  cooking  for 
this  one  and  pay  the  cook  about  seven  cents  a  month 
for  his  extra  work.  Each  man  gets  four  yards  of  cot- 
ton cloth,  forty  inches  wide,  which  costs  about  sixty 
cents,  a  year  for  clothing.  This  is  his  morning  suit,  his 
afternoon  suit,  if  he  has  any  evening  engagements,  it 
is  his  glad  rags,  when  he  goes  to  bed  at  night  it  is  his 
bed  sheet.  Among  the  lepers  of  India  it  costs  more  to 
correctly  gown  a  lady  than  it  does  to  clothe  a  gentle- 
man, for,  in  northern  India,  in  order  to  conform  to  social 
custom  a  woman  must  have  her  head  covered.  So  instead 
of  four  yards  of  cotton  cloth  it  takes  six  yards  for  her. 
This  she  winds  around,  making  a  skirt  of  it,  then  brings 
it  up  over  one  shoulder  and  under  the  opposite  armpit, 
making  a  shirtwaist  out  of  it,  and  then  it  goes  up  over 
the  head  making  the  "Chaddar"  or  head  covering. 
With  this  one  piece  of  cloth  so  arranged  she  is  dressed, 
ready  to  go  anywhere.  With  so  little  clothing  it  is  very 
difficult  for  the  men  and  women  to  keep  clean  and  I  am 
therefore  deeply  grateful  to  the  many  friends  in  Scot- 
land, the  United  States,  Canada,  Australia  and  New 
Zealand  who  have  at  various  times  sent  us  bundles  of 
shirts  for  the  men  and  middy  blouses  for  the  women, 
and  mufflers  and  socks  for  both.  These  we  give  out  at 
Christmas  and  always  feel  sorry  that  we  don't  have 
enough  to  go  round.  Several  times  my  wife  and  I  have 


112  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

been  threatened  to  be  mobbed  by  the  disappointed  ones 
who  failed  to  receive  a  garment  at  the  Christmas  treat. 
A  blanket  which  now  costs  about  two  dollars  is  issued 
every  second  year.  Medicines  and  bandages  will  aver- 
age about  thirty  cents  a  month  for  each  leper.  The 
wages  of  the  doctor,  the  compounder  and  hospital  as- 
sistants, servants,  washermen  and  the  sweepers  or  scav- 
engers use  up  most  of  the  rest  of  the  money.  I  used  to 
issue  all  food  to  the  lepers.  I  soon  learned  that  I  knew 
so  little  about  Indian  food  and  what  the  people  liked  that 
I  was  in  constant  trouble.  After  talking  it  over  with 
the  lepers,  it  was  decided  to  give  each  leper  about  a 
pound  of  grain  a  day.  Some  prefer  wheat,  some  rice, 
some  millet  and  some  a  mixture  of  barley  and  peas. 
Whatever  they  preferred,  they  had.  At  their  request 
I  built  in  the  asylum  a  little  country  store  and  one  of 
the  lepers  was  put  in  charge  as  storekeeper.  In  this 
store  was  kept  the  many  different  kinds  of  pulse,  spices, 
curries  and  condiments  that  make  Indian  food  so  won- 
drously  tasteful  and  so  marvelously  indigestible.  After 
having  provided  clothing,  medicines,  servants  and  the 
grain  ration,  it  worked  out  that  there  was  about  eight 
cents  a  week  left  for  each  leper  to  spend  at  the  store. 
This  was  given  to  him  on  Saturday  morning  and  he 
could  spend  it  in  any  way  he  liked — buying  any  luxur- 
ies that  his  fancy  dictated  and  that  could  be  bought  at 
the  rate  of  one  cent  per  day.  It  was  one  of  the  social 
events  of  the  day  for  the  leper  to  go  and  do  his  shop- 
ping. One  cent  in  North  India  does  not  buy  any  more 
than  one  cent  in  North  America  but  Indian  merchants 
are  in  the  habit  of  selling  smaller  amounts  of  commodi- 
ties. The  anna,  value  two  American  cents,  breaks  up 
into  twelve  "pies"  so  that  with  one  American  cent  a 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         113 

person  could  buy  six  different  things.  Of  course  it  was 
only  a  half-teaspoonful  of  sugar,  a  soup-spoonful  of  salt, 
a  head  of  garlic,  a  few  red  peppers  or  other  spices.  The 
amount  of  ghee  or  clarified  butter  that  they  could  buy 
for  one-sixth  of  a  cent  was  so  small,  I  often  thought  that 
if  any  of  them  should  have  been  so  unfortunate  as  to  lose 
it  he  would  have  to  borrow  a  magnifying  glass  to  find 
it  again.  Before  any  money  leaves  the  Asylum  to  go 
out  into  circulation  it  is  carefully  sterilized. 

In  the  early  days  when  I  went  over  to  the  leper  asylum 
I  would  be  surrounded  by  a  lot  of  the  lepers,  fighting, 
wrangling  and  squabbling,  asking  me  to  decide  between 
them.  They  would  complain  that  some  one  had  stolen 
their  food  or  their  clothing  or  their  cooking  utensils. 
I  am  sure  that  if  I  had  as  little  of  these  as  the  lepers  had, 
I  should  not  have  felt  very  badly  at  acquiring  a  little 
more,  even  at  the  expense  of  my  neighbors.  I  had  a 
great  deal  of  sympathy  for  the  thief,  but  I  had  a  little 
more  for  the  man  or  woman  who  had  lost  his  dinner, 
and  what  is  more,  I  had  to  provide  him  with  a  new  one 
which  often  put  me  into  serious  difficulty.  As  I  studied 
this  quarrelsomeness  among  the  lepers  I  found  that  most 
of  it  was  due  to  the  fact  that  there  were  twenty-four 
hours  in  every  day  and  the  leper  had  nothing  to  do  but 
think  about  himself  and  his  own  trouble.  He  was  bound 
to  be  into  mischief  of  one  sort  or  another.  The  leper  is 
the  greatest  traveler  in  India.  He  is  constantly  going 
from  one  shrine  or  holy  place  to  another,  from  one 
"Mahatma,"  a  man  claiming  to  be  divine,  an  incarna- 
tion of  one  of  the  gods,  and,  if  divine,  able  to  heal  all 
manner  of  sickness  and  disease,  to  another.  I  have  seen 
one  of  these  Mahatmas  sitting  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges 
clothed  in  the  four  directions,  that  being  sufficient  cloth- 


114  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

ing  for  a  god,  having  wrapped  up  in  a  dirty  little  towel, 
correspondence  with  women,  society  leaders,  in  some  of 
our  American  cities  whom  he  had  known  when  lecturing 
as  a  Swami  to  American  audiences.  He  was  telling  our 
students  what  fools  they  were  to  let  missionaries  teach 
them  the  Bible,  as  it  was  not  taught  in  America  any 
more.  I  do  not  blame  the  leper  for  traveling  so  much, 
since  his  quest  is  in  search  of  health,  but  it  made  my 
work  among  the  lepers  very  difficult.  It  seemed  as  if 
I  were  running  some  sort  of  a  transient  hotel  where  the 
lepers  could  come  in  for  a  day  or  two,  pull  themselves 
together  and  out  again.  In  those  early  days  at  least 
ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the  lepers  in  the  asylum  on  the 
first  of  January  were  off  again  on  their  travels  before 
the  thirty-first  of  December.  I  conceived  that  the  duty 
of  a  superintendent  of  a  leper  asylum  is  two-fold. 
First,  he  is  to  care  for  the  leper,  and  obey  Jesus'  com- 
mand to  cleanse  the  leper.  Secondly,  he  is  to  protect  the 
public  from  the  menace  of  the  leper  at  large. 

After  studying  a  number  of  occupations,  recognizing 
the  physical  limitations  of  the  leper,  realizing  that  noth- 
ing made  in  the  leper  asylum  could  be  sold  outside,  but 
must  be  consumed  in  the  asylum,  and  having  seen  the 
wonderful  results  of  Colonel  Hudson's  garden  in  the 
jail  I  decided  that  we  would  have  gardening  in  the  leper 
asylum.  When  I  announced  this  to  the  lepers  they  said, 
"But  that  is  work,  is  it  not,  Sahib?"  I  said,  "Yes,  it 
can  be  so  considered."  They  said,  "If  it  is  work  we 
don't  want  anything  to  do  with  it."  I  had  to  bribe 
them  to  take  to  the  work.  I  gave  seeds  of  fruit,  vegeta- 
bles and  flowers  to  as  many  as  I  could  persuade  to  take 
them.  I  offered  prizes  beginning  with  five  rupees,  four, 
three,  two,  one,  down  to  two  annas.  With  nine  months 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         115 

practically  rainless  every  year  it  is  necessary  to  provide 
some  irrigation.  The  government  very  kindly  bored 
deeper  the  well  which  gave  us  an  unfailing  supply  of 
water.  The  well  cylinder  was  ninety  feet  deep  and 
boring  was  continued  another  seventy-five  feet,  a  four 
inch  tube  sunk,  when  we  struck  an  underground  stream 
of  water.  The  usual  method  of  raising  water  from 
wells  in  India  is  by  means  of  oxen  and  a  big  bucket,  a 
long  rope,  and  a  pulley  wheel  set  on  pillars  over  the 
mouth  of  the  well.  I  followed  the  custom  of  the  coun- 
try and  bought  my  first  pair  of  oxen.  I  paid  fifteen 
dollars  for  them.  I  felt  quite  proud  of  my  bargain.  To 
think  of  actually  buying  two  live  oxen,  each  one  having 
a  head,  tail  and  four  legs,  for  fifteen  dollars  seemed  a 
great  bargain.  After  these  oxen  had  been  at  work  for 
some  time  I  made  a  very  interesting  discovery.  I  learned 
that  this  pair  of  oxen  could  not  draw  enough  water  out 
of  that  well,  to  irrigate  enough  ground,  to  grow  enough 
food  to  feed  themselves,  let  alone  irrigate  enough  ground 
to  grow  enough  food  for  the  lepers.  I  solved  this  prob- 
lem by  cabling  Montgomery-Ward  and  getting  out  a 
steam  boiler  and  engine,  bought  a  pump,  and  then  the 
lepers  had  an  abundant  supply  of  good  water;  garden- 
ing was  possible.  The  first  prize  that  year  was  won  by 
a  woman.  I  never  saw  her  stand  up.  She  literally  had 
nothing  to  stand  on,  but  crawling  out  on  her  hands  and 
knees  with  a  short  length  of  barrel  hoop  she  played  and 
worked  and  loved  around  her  little  plot  until  she  had  a 
beautiful  and  productive  garden.  When  the  lepers 
learned  that  whatever  they  grew  they  could  have  for 
themselves,  that  I  did  not  take  it  from  them,  gardening 
became  more  popular.  Their  fear  had  been  that  I  was 
going  to  get  them  to  grow  the  stuff  and  then  take  it 


116  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

away  from  them.  We  planted  out  a  lot  of  mango,  guava, 
orange,  and  lemon  trees,  papitas  and  bananas.  Imagine 
I  have  given  a  man  or  woman  a  banana  shoot  about  eigh- 
teen inches  high.  He  plants  it  and  waters  it  and  in  that 
rich  soil  and  sunshine  it  is  soon  up  ten  to  twelve  feet. 
The  big  heart-shaped  purple  flower  appears  like  the 
knob  of  a  shepherd's  crook  and  as  each  petal  falls  off, 
out  shoots  a  little  green  finger-like  banana.  It  is  not 
very  long  until  there  is  a  great  big  beautiful  bunch  of 
bananas.  About  the  time  it  is  ripening  I  notice  a  little 
wooden  bed  at  the  foot  of  the  banana  plant  and  I  say 
to  the  man  or  woman  on  it,  "Hello,  have  you  taken  to 
living  the  simple  life,  do  you  find  that  sleeping  in  the 
open  air  improves  your  complexion?"  "0,  no,  Sahib, 
it  is  not  that  but  that  my  friends  and  neighbors  have 
become  so  interested  in  this  bunch  of  bananas  that  they 
are  sampling  them  and  if  I  want  any  for  myself  I  must 
stay  pretty  close  by."  Or  imagine  a  man  with  a  cauli- 
flower patch  or  potatoes  just  about  ready.  It  does  not 
matter  what  a  priest  or  Mahatma  a  thousand  miles  away 
says  about  curing  leprosy,  the  man  with  the  garden  patch 
says,  "I  planted  it  and  watered  it  and  before  I  leave 
I  am  going  to  taste  the  fruit  thereof."  So  with  the 
good  hand  of  our  God  upon  us,  gardening  has  been  a 
great  blessing  to  the  asylum.  It  has  given  the  leper 
something  to  occupy  his  time,  something  more  to  eat,  has 
made  discipline  easy  and  has  been  of  the  greatest  service 
in  keeping  the  leper  in  the  asylum.  Ninety-eight  per 
cent,  of  the  lepers  in  the  asylum  have  come  to  regard  it 
as  their  permanent  home.  They  do  not  wander,  they 
do  not  want  to  be  driven  out  as  they  have  established 
themselves  in  their  little  houses  and  are  as  happy  as  peo- 
ple can  be  suffering  from  such  a  terrible  disease. 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         117 

When  the  church  was  about  finished  a  number  of  the 
lepers  came  to  me  and  said,  "Whose  church  is  this?" 
I  said,  "Well,  the  ladies  in  Ireland  who  sent  out  the 
money  to  build  it,  said  it  was  to  be  for  lepers,  so  as  far 
as  any  church  can  belong  to  man  it  is  yours."  They 
said,  "Well,  if  it  is  our  church  we  would  like  to  have 
some  part  in  it."  I  said,  "Well,  I  don't  see  what  you 
can  do,  you  have  no  money."  They  said,  "But,  Sahib, 
have  we  not  been  praying  for  this  church  for  years,  and 
if  we  were  praying  don't  you  think  we  were  saving  up?" 
I  said,  ' '  Well,  you  get  so  little  that  I  don 't  see  what  you 
could  save  out  of."  They  said,  "Well,  we  have  saved 
and  we  have  got  money  and  we  would  like  to  have  some 
part  in  the  church."  So  they  bought  the  pulpit  Bible, 
the  largest  the  Bible  Society  puts  out  in  the  Hindu  lan- 
guage. They  also  bought  a  clock  and  a  bell  so  that  they 
could  be  prompt  in  their  attendance  at  service.  They 
give  regularly  to  all  the  Presbyterian  causes.  They  give 
to  the  Bible  and  Tract  Society.  During  the  war  they 
took  up  two  collections  a  year  for  comforts  for  the 
wounded  Indian  soldiers,  giving  in  some  collections  over 
thirty  dollars.  I  can  not  go  before  this  leper  asylum 
congregation  and  tell  them  of  any  worthy  cause  or  needy 
individual  but  what  they  say,  "Can  we  not  help?" 
I  feel  that  if  there  is  any  person  on  earth  that  I  could 
forgive,  and  forgive  gladly,  for  being  selfish  and  self- 
centered  it  is  the  leper.  When  one  thinks  of  the  misery 
and  the  pain  of  the  disease  and  the  mental  attitude  in- 
duced by  the  suffering,  I  would  not  blame  the  leper  for 
saying,  ' '  I  get  so  little  that  all  I  get  I  want  for  myself, ' ' 
and  yet  I  have  known  leper  men  and  women,  when  some- 
thing appealed  to  them,  to  put  the  whole  eight  cents  into 
the  collection  plate  at  once,  denying  themselves  the  pleas- 


118  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

ure  of  going  to  the  little  country  store  to  do  their  shop- 
ping ;  living  a  whole  week  on  bread  made  without  raising 
of  any  kind,  just  meal  and  water  mixed  together,  in 
order  that  their  eight  cents  might  go  to  the  spreading 
of  Christ's  gospel.  To  these  lepers  Christ  seems  so  real, 
His  treatment  so  practical,  that  there  is  an  intimacy  in 
the  way  they  speak  of  Him  that  shows  a  depth  of  faith 
seldom  found. 

Fifteen  years  ago  in  the  American  Mission  Famine 
Orphanage  at  Lalitpur  was  a  girl  of  seventeen,  Frances 
by  name,  sweet,  attractive,  a  general  favorite,  engaged 
to  be  married,  one  of  the  most  capable  girls  in  the  in- 
stitution. There  came  on  her  hands,  round  the  joints  of 
her  fingers,  some  sores  that  refused  to  heal  in  spite  of  the 
application  of  every  remedy  the  lady  missionaries  pos- 
sessed. An  English  physician  was  called  in  who  said  the 
girl  was  suffering  from  leprosy  and  should  be  removed 
at  once  from  the  orphanage.  The  lady  superintendent 
wrote  to  me  to  ask  if  the  girl  could  be  admitted  to  the 
Naini  Leper  Asylum.  I  wrote  back  asking  her  to  send 
the  girl.  A  few  days  later  while  I  was  seated  at  break- 
fast, the  arrival  of  callers  was  announced.  It  proved  to 
be  Frances  and  her  brother,  who  had  just  been  graduated 
from  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Theological  Seminary  at 
Bareilly.  I  told  them  to  drive  on  over  to  the  Asylum 
and  I  would  catch  up  with  them  on  my  bicycle.  After 
finishing  my  breakfast  I  rode  over  and  caught  up  with 
them  just  before  reaching  the  Asylum.  We  walked  in 
together.  It  was  not  into  the  new  asylum  with  its  fine 
buildings  and  well  laid  out  and  flourishing  gardens,  but 
into  that  old  unspeakable  place.  Leprosy  so  often  makes 
me  think  of  strong  drink.  It  is  bad  enough  when  it  gets 
control  of  a  man,  but  infinitely  worse  when  it  gets  con- 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         119 

trol  of  a  woman.  What  the  leper  women  looked  like  in 
the  early  days  when  I  first  took  charge  of  the  asylum  is 
hard  to  describe.  They  were  so  dirty,  so  careless  of 
their  personal  appearance,  their  faces  so  hopeless  that 
it  did  not  seem  right  to  call  them  women,  and  one  strove 
in  vain  for  a  word  that  adequately  described  them. 
Frances,  dressed  in  her  beautiful,  white  flowing  garments 
as  for  some  gala  occasion,  walked  with  her  brother  and 
me  into  that  awful  place.  She  caught  sight  of  some  of 
those  creatures  who  sat  gossiping  under  the  shade  of  the 
neem  trees.  Frances  took  one  look,  then  she  threw  her 
head  on  her  brother's  shoulder  and  sobbed  as  though  her 
heart  would  break.  "My  God,"  she  cried,  "am  I  going 
to  become  as  they  are  ?  Is  that  what  is  in  store  for  me  ? " 
Her  brother  had  to  go  back  to  his  work  and  I  had  to  go 
back  to  mine  and  we  must  leave  her  in  the  Leper  Asylum. 
Frances  was  so  distressed  that  I  was  afraid  she  might 
attempt  to  destroy  herself  so  I  asked  several  of  the  old 
men  to  guard  the  well  and  see  she  did  not  get  into  it. 
A  few  days  later  my  wife  and  I  were  over  at  the  Asylum. 
I  said  to  Frances,  "I  deeply  sympathize  with  you,  I  know 
words  are  poor  things  to  express  what  I  feel  for  you  in 
this  awful  affliction.  Yet  in  spite  of  it  all,  is  this  not 
true?  In  that  orphanage  those  American  women 
brought  certain  things  into  your  life  that  have  made  it 
richer  and  fuller  and  better  than  the  lives  of  the  other 
women  in  the  asylum?"  She  assented.  I  then  con- 
tinued, "How  would  it  be  for  you  to  try  to  bring  some 
of  those  things  out  of  your  richer  life  and  put  them 
into  the  lives  of  these  other  leper  women  and  children?" 
She  promised  to  try.  My  wife  fitted  her  out  with  sup- 
plies. She  started  a  little  school.  She  taught  the 
women  to  sing,  the  children  to  read  and  write.  She  had 


120  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

learned  to  play  the  piano  in  the  orphanage.  So  I  got  a 
friend  to  buy  for  her  a  little  folding  organ.  This  was  a 
great  joy  to  her  and  helped  her  in  her  work.  Gradually 
there  came  a  transformation  over  the  women's  quarters. 
The  houses  were  made  clean  and  neat  and  tidy.  The 
women  also  improved  in  appearance.  They  washed  their 
clothes,  combed  their  hair,  and  tried  to  make  themselves 
attractive.  When  the  very  hot  weather  came,  my  wife 
had  to  take  our  little  baby  daughter  up  to  the  mountains. 
I  went  to  our  Women's  Hospital  and  said  to  the  lady  in 
charge,  "Dr.  Binford,  the  leper  women  do  so  miss  the 
visits  of  my  wife,  if  you  would  go  over  to  the  Asylum 
some  afternoon  you  would  cheer  them  greatly.  They  are 
very  grateful  for  the  visits  of  an  American  woman." 
She  promised  to  go  and  a  few  days  later  with  Miss  Alice 
Wishart  and  another  lady  missionary  she  drove  over. 
On  their  way  back  they  drove  through  the  college  campus 
where  we  were  playing  tennis.  After  our  game  I  strolled 
over  to  their  phaeton.  Dr.  Binford  said,  "  Mr.  Higgin- 
bottom,  Frances  opened  her  heart  to  me  to-day.  She 
said  that  when  she  first  went  into  the  asylum  she  could 
not  believe  that  there  was  a  God,  or  if  there  were  a 
God,  she  did  not  see  how  He  could  be  a  God  of  love  and 
afflict  any  one  as  He  had  afflicted  her,  but  Frances  went 
on  to  say  that  now  she  could  see  it  all.  God  had  a  work 
for  her  to  do,  ministering  to  the  other  lepers.  If  she  had 
not  herself  become  a  leper  she  would  never  have  dis- 
covered her  work,  so  she  said  every  day  I  live  now  I 
thank  Him  for  having  sent  me  here  and  given  me  this 
work  to  do." 

For  fifteen  years  I  have  known  Frances.  I  have  seen 
her  work.  I  know  that  greater  than  anything  she  says 
is  the  witness  of  her  own  life.  That  first  heartbreaking 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         121 

cry  I  can  never  forget.  Her  face  is  furrowed  with  pain 
and  suffering.  The  disease  has  worked  its  way  in  her. 
The  little  organ  is  always  carefully  dusted  and  polished, 
but  it  is  never  open,  she  plays  it  no  more.  So  many  of 
the  joints  of  her  fingers  have  rotted  off  that  she  cannot 
touch  the  keys.  But  her  face  is  always  radiant,  a  smile 
plays  about  that  pain-wrought  face.  No  word  of  com- 
plaint, ever  a  word  of  cheer  for  him  that  is  weary.  Most 
of  the  women  in  the  asylum  are  now  Christians,  after 
having  confessed  their  faith  in  the  God  and  Saviour  they 
have  learned  to  know  through  Frances.  I  know  of  no 
human  life  into  which  there  has  come  a  heavier  cross 
than  has  come  into  the  life  of  this  Indian  leper  girl,  nor 
do  I  know  any  other  human  life  that  has  taken  its  cross 
and  borne  it  more  bravely  or  with  such  unflagging  cour- 
age. And  after  associating  with  such  Great  Hearts  as 
some  of  the  leper  Christians  I  too  thank  God  for  having 
driven  me  into  the  Leper  Asylum,  having  forced  upon 
me  a  job  I  did  not  want  and  was  not  looking  for,  but  a 
job  that  has  provided  me  with  the  richest  and  deepest 
spiritual  experiences  of  my  life. 

When  I  said  good-by  to  the  lepers  (temporarily,  I 
hope)  on  the  thirteenth  day  of  August,  1919,  there  were 
nearly  five  hundred  lepers  in  the  asylum,  although  the 
accommodations  were  for  about  four  hundred,  the  extra 
hundred  squeezed  in  on  verandahs,  under  trees,  some 
sleeping  on  the  floor  of  the  church.  In  the  place  of  the 
ten  acres  of  land  there  were  nearly  one  hundred  and 
twenty  in  a  high  state  of  cultivation.  There  were  dairy 
cattle,  silos,  and  beautiful  gardens  and  orchards.  A  lit- 
tle over  a  mile  away  was  one  home  with  nearly  forty 
girls,  children  of  lepers,  but  untainted,  and  another  home 
for  boys  with  a  like  number.  These  children  are  being 


122  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

trained  and  educated.  The  older  of  the  girls,  my  wife  is 
training  as  Bible  women  and  nurses;  the  older  of  the 
boys  are  being  taught  modern  farming,  and  all  these  little 
children  handicapped  by  such  parentage  are  getting  their 
chance  in  life.  As  I  look  over  all  that  God  has  wrought 
in  this  institution,  I  thank  Him  for  having  allowed  me 
to  work  among  these  poor,  sorely  afflicted  people  whom 
Jesus  bade  His  disciples  to  cleanse. 

In  February,  1920,  there  was  a  conference  of  leper 
asylum  superintendents  held  in  Calcutta.  At  this  Sir 
Leonard  Rogers,  a  great  authority  on  tropical  disease, 
read  a  paper  on  the  progress  made  by  medical  science 
in  the  treating  of  this  awful  disease.  It  looks  as  though, 
in  some  cases,  definite  cures  had  been  effected.  About 
forty-two  cases  in  our  Asylum  are  receiving  his  treat- 
ment with  very  great  benefit.  There  is  reason  for  high 
hopes  that  this  disease  can  be  stamped  out  with  the  help 
of  segregation  and  the  medical  treatment  now  being  fol- 
lowed. I  am  frequently  asked  how  it  is  that  my  wife 
and  I  are  able  to  go  among  these  people  as  much  as  we 
do  without  contracting  it.  There  is  undoubtedly  danger. 
We  take  every  known  precaution.  We  do  not  believe  it 
right  to  tempt  God  by  carelessness.  We  do  recognize 
that  if  He  has  given  us  this  work  to  do  it  is  better  for 
us  to  do  it,  even  at  the  risk  of  contracting  the  disease, 
than  it  is  in  dodging  His  will.  Fortunately  the  bacillus 
of  leprosy  does  not  live  very  long  out  of  its  host.  Lep- 
rosy is  nothing  like  as  contagious  as  small-pox  or  measles. 
If  it  were,  pretty  nearly  everybody  in  India  would  have 
it.  The  government  officials  of  India  from  the  Viceroy 
and  Lady  Chelmsford  down,  British  and  Indian,  are  one 
and  all  helping  the  Mission  to  Lepers  by  giving  sites  for 
asylums,  contributions  toward  new  buildings,  grants-in- 


THE  MISSIONARY'S  AVOCATION         123 

aid  toward  the  maintenance,  so  that  to-day  the  govern- 
ment practically  covers  every  dollar  of  mission  money 
with  one  dollar  of  government  funds.  As  no  money  is 
spent  for  the  salaries  of  superintendents  (they  all  give 
their  services  and  are  supported  by  their  respective  mis- 
sions) it  is  easy  to  see  that  a  great  deal  can  be  accom- 
plished in  caring  for  the  lepers  for  a  small  investment  of 
money.  The  leper  that  sat  by  the  roadside  and,  as  Jesus 
passed  by,  said  unto  Him,  "Lord,  if  Thou  wilt  Thou 
canst  make  me  clean, ' '  is  often  in  my  mind.  The  record 
tells  us  that  Jesus  stretched  forth  His  hand  and  said,  ' '  I 
will,  be  thou  clean,"  and  immediately  his  leprosy  was 
cleansed.  The  leper  had  been  thrust  outside  the  camp, 
was  outside  the  pale  of  human  society,  and  Jesus  by  that 
touch  brought  him  back  into  the  human  family.  And  I 
take  it  that  the  work  of  the  Mission  to  Lepers  is  con- 
ceived in  the  spirit  that  Jesus  showed,  of  bringing  this 
poor  unfortunate,  that  man  despises,  back  into  the  hu- 
man family. 


"Replenish  the  earth,  and  subdue  it."  Gen.  1 :  28. 

"Ye  shall  know  the  truth  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free." 

John  8:32. 

"Gather  up  the  fragments  that  remain  that  nothing  be  lost." 

John  6 : 12. 


CHAPTER  X 

JESUS'   EXAMPLE  FOR   SUCH   WORK 

I  went  out  to  India  having  specialized  in  philosophy 
and  hoping  to  be  an  evangelist.  I  end  up  by  being  a 
missionary  farmer.  I  have  had  friends  tell  me  they 
could  not  see  why  I  am  interested  in  the  things  in  which 
I  am  interested.  They  ask  what  plows,  harrows,  tractors, 
silos,  threshing  machines,  and  better  cattle  have  to  do 
with  the  evangelization  of  India.  Bulletins  upon  the 
use  of  manure  and  silage  are  good,  but  what  is  their 
value  as  missionary  tracts? 

I  am  accused  of  having  lost  my  first  love  and  of  hav- 
ing grown  cold,  of  having  become  a  materialist,  and  of 
having  lost  my  aspirations,  of  being  indifferent  to  spirit- 
ual and  eternal  things,  of  caring  only  for  the  things  of 
time  and  sense,  the  things  that  shall  pass  away,  that  are 
not  eternal.  Now  I  cannot  be  indifferent  to  such  criti- 
cism from  such  sources.  I  do  not  doubt  the  honesty  and 
kindliness  of  my  critics.  It  behooves  me  therefore  to 
see  what  there  is  in  such  criticism.  For,  if  it  is  true  and 
justified,  my  work  is  a  hindrance  rather  than  a  help  to 
the  spread  of  Christ's  kingdom  in  India.  I  should 
deeply  deplore  such  a  result. 

In  speaking  of  this  criticism  I  do  not  wish  to  give  the 
impression  that  the  whole  missionary  body  is  opposed 
to  this  kind  of  work.  In  fact  there  is  a  very  large 
majority  who  heartily  approve  and  wish  it  God  speed. 

124 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK     125 

Again  and  again  when  insurmountable  obstacles  seemed 
to  block  the  way  these  friends,  in  every  way  possible, 
have  helped  to  overcome  the  difficulties  and  encouraged 
the  Agricultural  Institute  to  persevere.  They  have  said 
that  if  in  Christian  literate  America,  with  its  abundant 
wealth  and  widespread  education,  there  is  need  for 
Hampton,  Mount  Hermon,  Tuskeegee,  Berea,  Kentucky, 
and  the  Rockefeller  Foundation;  how  much  more  in 
poor,  illiterate,  non-Christian  India.  I  wish  therefore 
to  express  my  hearty  and  grateful  thanks  to  all  those, 
both  in  India  and  America,  who  are  helping  to  make  the 
Agricultural  Institute  an  effective  instrument  for  help- 
ing India  to  help  itself.  The  following  quotations  from 
the  minutes  of  the  National  Missionary  Council  of  India 
show  how  the  representatives,  both  Indian  and  foreign,  of 
all  the  evangelical  missions  in  India  regard  such  work. 

From  Proceedings  of  the  Fourth  Meeting  of  the  Na- 
tional Missionary  Council,  Coonoor,  November  9-13, 
1917. 

Resolved : 

XX-1.  The  Council  endorses  the  view  that  Agricul- 
tural and  Industrial  Missions  are  an  integral  part  of  the 
presentation  of  the  Gospel  to  India  at  this  time. 

From  Proceedings  of  the  Fifth  Meeting  of  the  Na- 
tional Missionary  Council,  Benares,  November  14-19, 
1918. 

Resolved : 

XII-1.  That  in  the  opinion  of  the  council  missions 
should  aim  at  the  establishment  of  central  institutions 
for  the  training  of  teachers  in  agriculture  and  allied  in- 
dustries in  the  various  language  or  climatic  areas. 

2.  That  as  far  as  possible  teachers  thus  trained  should 
be  employed. 


126  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

3.  That   the    Council   recommends  missions  in   mass 
movement  areas  to  definitely  plan  for  adequate  instruc- 
tion in  agriculture  and  allied  industries,  such  as  silk, 
poultry,  the  making  and  repairing  of  agricultural  tools 
and  implements. 

4.  That  the  Council  urges  upon  the  Home  Boards  the 
necessity  of  providing  an  adequate  supply  of  trained 
men  and  suitable  equipment  to  carry  on  agricultural 
and  allied  industrial  training,  especially  in  mass  move- 
ment areas. 

I  realize  that  I  am  living  this  life  only  once,  that  if 
I  make  a  mistake  with  it,  there  is  no  chance  to  come  back 
again  and  do  the  thing  right.  I  understand  that  the 
Will  of  God  is  the  supreme  thing  for  my  life,  the  only 
thing  that  really  matters.  It  is  not  whether  I  am  a  mis- 
sionary that  matters,  or  not  a  missionary,  but  wherever 
I  live  and  whatever  I  do,  God's  Will  is  first,  the  con- 
trolling factor  that  determines  the  whole  of  my  life. 
Further,  I  am  not  afraid  of  His  Will.  Trying  to  obey 
it  has  led  me  to  do  some  things  I  would  not  have  done  on 
my  own  initiative.  But  I  have  always  found  that  His 
Will  has  been  infinitely  larger  and  better  than  my  own 
will  for  my  life.  When  choosing  my  own  course  for 
myself  I  have  made  so  many  mistakes,  missed  the  way 
so  often,  that  I  gladly  turn  over  the  guidance  of  my  life 
to  His  Will  and  trust  it  fully.  Should  I  for  any  reason 
whatsoever  fail  to  do  His  Will  with  my  life,  I  should 
consider  that  the  greatest  possible  tragedy.  I  am  anxious 
to  do  His  Will  as  soon  as  I  see  it.  There  is  often  great 
difficulty  to  know  what  His  Will  is. 

I  have  found  His  Will  for  my  life  most  clearly  laid 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK      127 

down  in  the  Bible.  I  consider  the  Bible  the  one  up-to- 
date  book  in  a  world  where  most  books  are  soon  out  of 
date  and  behind  the  times  and  needs  of  men.  When  a 
boy  on  my  father's  farm  in  Wales  it  was  reading  the 
Bible  hours  each  day  by  myself  for  over  a  year,  fighting 
it  all  the  time,  that  caused  me  to  offer  Him  my  life 
without  condition  or  reservation.  I  sought  to  know  His 
Will  for  my  life  and  I  was  not  sure  that  I  knew  what  it 
was.  I  knew  His  last  command  to  His  disciples  was  to 
go  into  all  the  world,  to  preach  the  Gospel,  to  teach  all 
nations,  teaching  them  to  observe  all  things  whatsoever 
He  had  commanded.  I  was  not  sure  where  He  wanted 
me,  or  what  He  wanted  me  to  do.  But  until  He  made  the 
way  plain,  I  considered  it  was  my  duty  to  get  ready  to 
obey  His  last  command  and  prepare  for  that  which  was 
farthest  off,  and  if  He  wanted  me  anywhere  else  it  would 
be  easy  for  Him  to  stop  me  at  any  intermediate  place, 
if  that  were  where  He  wanted  me  to  live  my  life  and  do 
my  work. 

So  when  criticisms  became  severe  and  I  felt  uncertain 
of  myself  it  was  again  to  this  Book  that  I  went.  I 
wanted  to  be  sure  first  of  all  that  I  knew  what  the  Gospel, 
the  "Good  News,"  really  was.  I  studied  anew  the  life 
of  Our  Lord.  I  noticed  that  on  the  threshold  of  His 
public  ministry  He  went  into  the  synagogue  where  He 
had  been  brought  up  and,  as  was  His  custom,  the  village 
carpenter  stood  up  to  read.  The  scroll  was  handed  to 
Him  and  He  unwound  it  till  He  found  the  place  where 
it  is  written,  "The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  be- 
cause He  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the 
poor,  He  hath  sent  me  to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to 
preach  deliverance  to  the  captives,  and  recovering  of  the 


128  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

sight  to  the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  those  that  are  bruised, 
to  preach  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord."  St.  Luke 
4:16  et  al. 

The  first  thing  I  notice  is  that  the  Spirit  was  upon 
Jesus  for  service.  "To  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  poor." 
That  I  take  to  mean  the  oral,  the  spoken,  presentation  of 
His  truth  about  salvation.  A  great  many  good  people 
would  stop  with  this  oral  presentation  of  the  Gospel 
because  they  are  afraid  of  works.  It  is  true  that  Jesus 
placed  preaching  first,  but  it  is  only  part  of  His  mes- 
sage. He  continued, ' '  He  hath  sent  me  to  heal  the  broken- 
hearted, to  preach  deliverance  to  the  captives  and  recov- 
ering of  sight  to  the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that 
are  bruised."  Jesus'  Gospel  is  preaching  plus  action 
which  explains  and  gives  content  to  the  preaching.  We 
can  take  all  of  these  clauses  in  their  primary  literal  sense, 
and  from  the  literal  interpretation  find  a  place  for  help- 
ing India's  outcaste,  broken-hearted  and  broken-spirited 
by  centuries  of  persecution,  degradation  and  oppression, 
we  can  find  warrant  for  medical  missions  and  all  other 
forms  of  humanitarian  and  social  service.  We  can  take 
all  of  these  clauses  in  their  spiritual  and  figurative  sense 
and  some  would  say,  their  fuller  sense,  and  find  out  that 
Christ  was  anointed  to  help  all  human  life,  to  make  it 
better,  to  rid  it  of  wrong  and  oppression.  In  other 
words  His  complete  Gospel  is  more  than  an  oral  presen- 
tation, more  than  a  matter  of  words.  It  calls  for  doing 
as  well  as  being,  the  act  that  proves  the  faith,  "Not  every 
one  that  saith  unto  me,  Lord,  Lord,  but  he  that  doeth 
my  Will";  "He  that  heareth  my  words  and  doeth  shall 
be  likened  unto  a  wise  man."  "If  any  man  will  do 
His  Will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine." 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK     129 

The  object  of  the  Gospel  is  to  save  mankind.  It  is  to 
help  men  whenever  or  wherever  they  need  help,  for  the 
present  time  as  well  as  for  eternity.  Instead  of  despising 
this  body  and  this  present  life  God  thought  so  much  of 
these  that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son  a  human  body 
and  He  shared  our  life  with  all  its  limitations.  And 
in  this  human  flesh  dwelt  very  God  of  very  God,  the 
Lamb  slain  from  before  the  foundation  of  the  world.  If 
man  in  his  present  state  be  not  the  object  of  the  Gospel, 
what  purpose  does  it  have?  "He  that  believeth  hath 
(present  tense)  eternal  life,"  now.  When  God  through 
Christ  saves  a  person,  eternal  life  for  that  person  has 
already  begun.  Death  makes  only  a  change  in  place 
and  state.  The  individual  persists. 

This  statement  from  Isaiah  which  He  read  in  the 
synagogue  where  every  one  knew  Him  can  be  taken  as 
the  program  for  His  own  life.  "This  day  is  this  scrip- 
ture fulfilled  in  your  ears."  If  we  read  on  to  the  end 
of  the  chapter  we  have  a  very  complete  demonstration  of 
how  He  Himself  carried  out  His  own  program.  "Now 
when  the  sun  was  setting,  all  they  that  had  any  sick 
with  divers  diseases  brought  them  unto  Him ;  and  He  laid 
His  hands  on  every  one  of  them  and  healed  them. ' '  To 
one  who  has  lived  in  an  oriental  country  this  picture  is 
a  very  full  one.  Disease  is  so  common,  so  much  of  it  is 
incurable,  human  life  slips  away  so  easily ;  remedies  that 
cure  are  so  few.  The  watchers  sitting  by  the  loved  one, 
who  is  tossing  in  fever,  writhing  in  pain,  are  unable  to 
help,  dreading  the  night  when  life  goes  out  all  too  effort- 
less. At  the  hour  of  greatest  dread  and  terror  He  laid 
His  hand  on  every  one  of  them,  and  healed  them.  There 
is  no  incurable  ward  in  Jesus'  hospital,  no  long,  linger- 


130  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

ing,  tedious  convalescence,  He  healed  them  all.  Another 
striking  demonstration  is  recorded  in  St.  Matthew  9 : 35. 
And  this  healing  of  the  body  is  part  of  His  Gospel. 

His  first  miracle  confirms  His  program  for  His  own 
life.  There  is  great  significance  in  this  first  miracle 
of  Christ  at  the  wedding  at  Cana,  the  turning  of  water 
into  wine.  The  occasion,  the  place,  the  fact  that  it  was 
His  first  miracle  and  that  the  miracle  was  what  it  was, 
should  be  noted.  He  knew  how  His  every  act  would  be 
scrutinized.  With  Him  there  was  no  forgetting  the  im- 
port of  what  He  did,  no  waste  movement,  no  slip,  no 
second  try,  no  failure  to  take  into  account  the  vista  of 
history.  His  first  miracle  was  so  chosen  by  Him  as  to 
reveal  His  meaning  to  the  world,  it  is  full  of  purpose. 
By  His  first  miracle  He  turned  water  into  wine.  In 
these  days  there  are  many  who  are  afraid  of  this  miracle. 
They  think  it  would  have  been  better  had  he  turned  wine 
into  water.  He  actually  turned  water  into  wine;  He 
gave  color  to  that  which  had  no  color ;  He  gave  taste  to 
the  tasteless;  He  gave  sweetness  to  that  which  lacked 
sweetness;  He  gave  brightness  and  sparkle  where  it  had 
not  before  existed;  He  satisfied  man's  taste.  He  com- 
pletely changed  the  water  into  wine,  something  totally 
different,  He  enriched  water  into  wine.  Surely  He 
comes  into  our  dull,  drab  colorless  lives  and  enriches 
them  in  a  way  that  is  beyond  the  power  of  any  person  to 
explain.  No,  the  greatest  miracle  of  all  is  the  way  He 
comes  into  human  life  so  that  it  is  not  what  it  was  before 
He  came.  So  great  is  the  change  which  He  makes  when 
He  comes  into  our  lives  that  we  call  it  a  "new  birth"; 
and  it  is  nothing  less. 

We  have  seen  what  Jesus  considered  the  program  for 
His  own  life  work.  We  have  noted  how  He  carried  out 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK      131 

His  program.  In  St.  Matthew  10 :  7-8  in  sending  forth 
the  twelve  He  lays  down  a  program  for  His  disciples. 
"As  ye  go,  preach,  saying,  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at 
hand.  Heal  the  sick,  cleanse  the  leper,  raise  the  dead, 
cast  out  devils,  freely  ye  have  received  freely  give." 

Again  it  is  evident  that  while  He  puts  preaching  first  it 
is  not  all  of  His  Gospel.  A  series  of  coordinate  clauses 
give  the  other  parts  of  His  Gospel.  ' '  Heal  the  sick,  etc. ' ' 
So  many  people  tell  me  they  are  interested  in  the  work 
God  has  given  me  to  do  because,  like  medical  missions, 
"it  is  a  good  wedge  for  the  Gospel."  When  people  say 
this,  I  wonder  what  their  conception  of  the  Gospel  is.  Is 
it  sermons  only,  statements  of  doctrine,  words  arranged 
in  tomes  of  theology,  words  of  fire  to  convict  of  sin, 
words  of  forgiveness  to  him  who  repents,  words  of  hope 
to  cheer  the  pilgrim  on  his  way,  words  to  comfort  the 
mourner?  All  these  it  surely  is  and  must  be,  but  all 
this  does  not  fill  out  the  compass  of  His  Gospel,  nor  test 
its  fullest  length  or  depth,  breadth  or  height. 

I  utterly  repudiate  the  "wedge  theory"  for  the  Gos- 
pel. The  Gospel  that  I  received  of  the  Lord  Jesus  needs 
no  wedge.  A  Gospel  that  needs  a  wedge  needs  careful 
examination.  It  is  not  the  Gospel  that  Jesus  brought 
into  the  world.  If  the  Gospel  is  not  its  own  wedge  then 
it  is  the  most  colossal  and  pathetic  failure  of  history. 
Medical  missions  are  the  Gospel.  Cleansing  the  lepers 
is  the  Gospel,  as  much  as  preaching  is  the  Gospel.  These 
carry  out  His  specific  commands  as  much  as  preaching 
does.  Is  not  the  slow  progress  of  the  Gospel  over  the 
world  to-day  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  believers  have 
often  had  a  one-sided  and  incomplete  Gospel  ?  Less  than 
Jesus  laid  down  as  the  Gospel?  People  can  often  better 
understand  the  oral  presentation,  if  there  has  been  loving 


132  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

service  to  give  content  to  the  words,  to  prove  that  the 
words  have  Life  back  of  them.  The  word  became  flesh. 
Jesus'  matchless  sermons  and  parables  are  strengthened 
by  His  deeds.  When  challenged  it  was  not  to  His  words 
but  to  His  works  He  appealed,  "Many  good  works  have 
I  shewed  you  from  my  Father ;  for  which  of  those  works 
do  ye  stone  me?"  St.  John  10:  32. 

Again  when  John  the  Baptist  was  in  prison,  doubts 
arose  in  his  mind  as  to  whether  Jesus  was  really  the 
One  that  should  come.  He  sent  two  of  his  disciples  to 
ask  Jesus,  "And  in  that  same  hour  He  cured  many  of 
their  infirmities  and  plagues,  and  of  evil  spirits ;  and  unto 
many  that  were  blind  He  gave  sight.  Then  Jesus  an- 
swering said  unto  them,  Go  your  way  and  tell  John  what 
things  ye  have  seen  and  heard,  how  that  the  blind  see, 
the  lame  walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed,  the  deaf  hear,  the 
dead  are  raised,  to  the  poor  the  Gospel  is  preached." 

This  He  offers  as  proof  of  His  Messiahship,  and  in  this 
instance  He  does  not  mention  preaching  till  the  last ;  His 
healing  of  the  body  and  caring  for  its  needs  come  first 
into  His  mind  in  this  hour  when  He  wants  to  strengthen 
the  faith  of  him  of  whom  He  says  that  of  those  born  of 
women  there  is  not  a  greater  prophet  than  John  the 
Baptist. 

There  is  a  very  real  danger  that  all  desire  to  guard 
against.  The  danger  is  in  substituting  "service"  for 
' '  salvation, ' '  business  for  Godliness.  We  are  commanded 
to  "work  out"  our  own  salvation,  something  we  already 
possess,  not  to  work  in  order  to  gain  salvation.  The  idea 
that  work,  if  there  is  only  enough  of  it,  can  save  a  sinner 
from  his  sins  is  held  by  some.  I  was  asked  to  give  an 
address  to  a  company  of  students  to  answer  the  question 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK     133 

"Is  not  such  work  as  yours  capable  of  being  carried  on 
without  the  religious,  Christian  motive?"  "Can  not  a 
person  who  does  not  believe  in  Jesus  Christ  as  the 
world's  only  Saviour  do  such  work?"  I  had  to  answer 
that  I  was  a  poor  one  of  whom  to  ask  such  a  question 
for  I  had  never  tried  to  do  my  work  apart  from  religion. 
My  work  I  take  to  be  the  expression  of  the  fact  that  I 
believe  God.  I  had  always  done  it  believing  that  it  was 
God's  Will  for  me  and  I  could  do  nothing  else.  I  am 
satisfied  that  the  religious  motive  must  be  present,  that 
Jesus  is  the  only  one  who  can  supply  the  continuing 
power  to  carry  on  through  all  circumstances  and  all  the 
time. 

As  followers  of  Him  we  can  do  what  He  has  com- 
manded us  to  do  giving  Him  His  rightful  place  in  it,  as 
the  Author  and  Finisher  not  only  of  our  faith,  but  of 
our  work  also,  which  is  but  the  expression  of  that  faith. 
Many  are  afraid  of  the  "Social  Gospel"  as  they  call  it, 
because  it  brings  them  so  near  the  world,  because  they 
fear  the  complications  that  are  likely  to  arise,  that  they 
will  do  more  than  the  Gospel  really  calls  for.  There  is 
a  real  danger  in  this,  but  I  think  we  must  risk  it.  Far 
better  to  go  two  miles  with  Him  than  one.  There  are 
those  also  who  are  opposed  to  the  "Social  Gospel"  out 
of  sheer  laziness.  It  would  break  up  the  regularity  of 
their  comfortable,  ordered  lives.  To  provide  material 
requisites  to  feed  the  hungry  would  rob  them  of  time 
for  contemplation. 

There  are  thirty-six  miracles  recorded  in  the  four 
Gospels.  Twenty-eight  tell  of  healing  disease,  raising  to 
life,  giving  sight  to  the  blind,  feeding  the  hungry,  cast- 
ing out  demons.  Eight  do  not  have  this  personal  in- 


134  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

timate  relation  to  some  individual  or  group  in  need. 
The  great  majority  have  to  do  with  meeting  immediate 
human  need. 

Why  did  Jesus  perform  these  miracles?  Some  say  to 
teach  spiritual  lessons,  to  give  preachers  texts  for  ser- 
mons wherefrom  they  can  draw  analogies  between  the 
physical  ill  and  the  spiritual  ill.  I  have  no  objection  to 
any  one  getting  all  the  spiritual  meaning  he  can  out  of 
the  miracles  of  Jesus.  I  think  it  well,  however,  to  re- 
member that  the  primary  object  of  Jesus  in  performing 
these  miracles  was  to  meet  the  present  physical  needs  of 
those  He  healed  or  fed  as  well  as  to  forgive  their  sins. 

I  never  go  into  the  leper  asylum  of  which  I  have  charge 
without  thinking  of  that  leper  who,  as  Jesus  passed  by 
said,  ''Lord,  if  thou  wilt  Thou  canst  make  me  clean." 
Jesus  said,  "I  will,"  and  put  forth  His  hand  and  touched 
him  saying,  "I  will,  be  thou  clean."  And  immediately 
his  leprosy  was  cleansed.  That  fair,  pure  hand  of  the 
Son  of  God  touched  that  disease-rotted  body  and  it  was 
clean.  This  man  who  had  been  outside  the  pale  of 
ordinary  society,  by  that  touch,  was  brought  back  into 
the  human  family.  Why  did  Jesus  cleanse  the  leper? 
To  enable  men  to  draw  analogies  between  leprosy  and 
sin?  Or  was  it,  that  seeing  the  desperate  need  of  the 
leper  and  the  leper's  faith,  He  healed  him  ?  Jesus  healed 
the  leper  because  he  was  a  leper  and  it  was  from  leprosy 
he  needed  relief.  It  was  his  physical  need  and  Jesus' 
ability  to  meet  that  need  that  caused  Him  to  heal  the 
leper. 

The  blind  man  found  out  that  Jesus  was  passing  by. 
He  had  faith  to  believe  Jesus  could  give  him  sight  and 
Jesus  spat  upon  his  eyes  and  the  man  saw.  It  was  the 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  "WORK     135 

man's  blindness  that  moved  the  Great  Heart  with  com- 
passion and  He  healed  him. 

I  think  of  the  five  thousand  far  from  home,  out  in  the 
desert,  hungry,  tired,  night  coming  down.  Jesus  com- 
manded His  disciples  to  feed  the  multitude.  They 
showed  how  impossible  His  command  was,  again  He  in- 
sisted "Give  ye  them  to  eat."  They  found  the  boy  with 
the  loaves  and  fishes,  all  they  had.  They  brought  it  all 
to  Jesus.  Jesus  took  the  five  loaves  and  two  fishes  and 
blessed  and  brake  and  not  only  were  all  fed  and  had 
all  they  would  eat,  but  there  were  twelve  baskets  full 
more  than  were  required.  These  twelve  baskets  were 
not  the  leavings,  the  offal,  but  were  there  ready  to  be 
distributed  to  any  who  needed  more.  God's  measure  is 
always  abundant,  no  niggardly  hand  when  He  is  Pro- 
vider, He  prepares  more  than  we  need. 

Jesus  fed  this  great  multitude  because  they  were 
hungry,  physically.  It  was  their  need  that  appealed  to 
Him.  He  drew  no  spiritual  lesson  at  this  time.  The 
next  day  He  preached  His  sermon  and  emphasized  that 
He  is  the  Bread  of  Life.  "I  am  the  Living  Bread,  if 
any  man  shall  eat  of  this  bread  he  shall  live  forever." 
Nowhere  else  does  He  make  greater  claims  for  Himself 
than  in  this  sermon  that  came  as  a  result  of  feeding  the 
multitude.  Before  He  preached  the  sermon  He  fed  the 
crowd.  "Would  not  the  church  be  wise  to  copy  her  Lord 
in  this  wherever  necessary?  As  He  looks  out  over 
stricken  Armenia;  over  famine  cursed  China;  over  a 
large  part  of  Europe  where  the  children  to-day  are  dying 
of  hunger;  over  India  where  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave  a  multitude,  over  one  hundred  millions,  are  chroni- 
cally hungry,  does  he  say  less  to  His  disciples  to-day  in 


136  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

America  than  He  said  that  day  in  Galilee  ?  I  think  not. 
If  we  bring  to  Him  all  we  have  and  let  Him  bless  it  and 
break  it,  we  will  see  the  continuing  miracle.  We  our- 
selves will  have  all  we  need  and  the  hungry  everywhere 
will  be  fed.  His  command  still  holds  to  feed  the  physi- 
cal hunger,  and  after  that  the  spiritual  hunger  with  the 
Bread  of  Life  that  came  down  from  heaven  and  giveth 
life  to  the  world.  He  came  that  they  might  have  life  and 
have  it  more  abundantly. 

I  think  again  of  that  great  picture  drawn  for  us  in  the 
twenty-fifth  chapter  of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel.  The  na- 
tions are  separated  from  one  another  as  a  shepherd  sep- 
arates the  sheep  from  the  goats.  The  sheep  on  His  right 
hand,  the  goats  on  His  left.  To  those  on  His  right  hand 
He  says,  "Come  ye  blessed  of  my  Father,  inherit  the 
kingdom  prepared  for  you  from  the  foundation  of  the 
world."  It  is  significant  that  no  commendation  is  given 
to  those  who  have  not  gone  to  their  needy  fellows  and 
helped  them  where  their  need  was.  They  say  unto  Him, 
' '  Why,  Lord,  for  what  do  you  call  us  blessed  ?  What  have 
we  ever  done?"  And  Jesus  says,  "You  saw  me  hungry 
and  ye  gave  me  to  eat."  They  say,  "Hold  on  there 
Lord,  are  you  not  going  too  fast,  making  some  mistake! 
We  never  saw  you,  let  alone  saw  you  hungry. "  "0,  yes 
you  did,"  Jesus  says.  "When  you  went  to  that  little 
famine-cursed  Indian  village  that  had  been  growing  ten 
bushels  of  wheat  per  acre  and  you  taught  it  to  grow 
twenty  you  were  helping  to  feed  the  hungry."  "When 
you  went  to  that  village  that  was  growing  sixty  pounds 
of  poor  short -staple  cotton  per  acre  and  taught  them  to 
grow  three  hundred  pounds  per  acre  of  good  long-staple 
cotton  you  were  helping  to  clothe  the  naked."  "When 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK     137 

you  went  to  that  village  where  the  well  had  dried  up  and 
you  sent  a  boring  outfit,  and  bored  down  until  you  had 
secured  an  abundant  supply  of  water,  enough  for  man 
and  beast  and  some  over  for  irrigation,  you  were  helping 
to  give  drink  to  the  thirsty."  "When  the  doctor  opened 
his  hospital  for  the  poor  and  lowly  who  otherwise  would 
have  no  medical  aid,  he  was  visiting  the  sick."  "When 
you  go  to  India's  out  castes,  to  her  'untouchables'  whom 
man  despiseth,  who  have  suffered  age-long,  untellable 
wrongs  in  the  fearful  prison  of  caste,  and  freed  them 
from  its  bondage  and  caused  them  to  walk  as  free  men, 
that  was  done  unto  Me."  "Lord,  we  never  thought  of 
You  there  or  in  that  degraded  state."  "0,  yes,  take 
the  veil  from  that  little  humble  Indian  village  outcaste, 
I  am  there.  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  to  the  lowest  and 
meanest  of  India's  outcastes  ye  did  it  unto  Me." 

This  is  the  great  glory  of  Christ's  Gospel.  It  is  the 
one  full,  complete  program,  adequate  for  man's  needs 
for  time  and  eternity.  It  comes  to  man  in  his  neediest 
hour  and  sets  his  feet  upon  a  rock  and  puts  a  new  song 
in  his  mouth.  The  Gospel  is  the  only  sufficient  program 
for  the  individual.  The  nations  have  tried  everything 
else  but  the  Gospel  and  they  have  failed  to  learn  how 
to  avoid  war  and  get  peace,  why  not  give  the  Gospel  a 
chance  in  national  life  as  well  as  in  individual  life?  I 
believe  the  golden  rule  in  national  life  will  bring  greater 
victories  than  armies  and  navies.  The  nations  still  be- 
lieve in  armies  and  navies  after  the  collapse  of  military 
Germany  who  said,  "Given  guns  enough,  what  need  of 
God  ? ' '  America 's  Secretary  of  the  Navy  wants  to  make 
her  navy  the  greatest  in  the  world.  Does  history  record 
that  an  army  or  navy  ever  really  saved  a  nation  whose 


138  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

sole  trust  was  in  the  power  of  heavy  artillery  or  battle- 
ship ?  It  is  the  Tightness,  the  justness  of  the  cause  that 
nerves  men 's  wills,  that  teaches  them  how  to  fight. 

To  sum  up  we  see  that  Christ's  program  for  His  own 
life,  the  carrying  out  of  that  program  in  practical  demon- 
stration in  His  miracles,  His  commands  to  His  disciples, 
His  commendation  of  those  who  feed  the  hungry,  clothe 
the  naked,  give  drink  to  the  thirsty,  all  call  for  more 
than  preaching.  They  call  for  the  practical  application 
of  that  which  gives  a  meaning  and  content  to  the  oral 
presentation  of  God's  truth.  I  believe  the  church  would 
do  well  to  pay  more  attention  rather  than  less  to  this  as- 
pect of  the  Gospel.  Many  who  cannot  understand  or 
interpret  words,  can  understand  loving  deeds.  I  am  not 
decrying  preaching.  We  need  more  of  it  not  less,  we 
need  The  Word  become  flesh.  Preaching  is  one  of  the 
most  powerful  forces  in  the  world  to-day.  Knox,  Calvin, 
Wesley,  Spurgeon,  Moody,  have  made  history. 

The  place  in  the  missionary  program  of  the  work  we 
are  trying  to  do  at  Allahabad  falls  in  with  events  as 
recorded  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Acts.  There  had  been 
a  great  ingathering  "The  number  of  the  disciples  was 
multiplied,  there  arose  a  murmuring  of  the  Grecians 
against  the  Hebrews  because  their  widows  were  neglected 
in  the  daily  ministrations."  Then  the  twelve  called  the 
multitude  of  disciples  unto  them  and  said,  "It  is  not 
reason  that  we  should  leave  The  Word  of  God  and  serve 
tables,  wherefore,  brethren,  look  ye  out  among  you  seven 
men  of  honest  report,  full  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  wis- 
dom whom  ye  may  appoint  over  this  business.  But  we 
will  give  ourselves  continually  to  prayer  and  the  min- 
istering of  The  Word."  In  India  we  have  thousands  of 
low-caste  converts,  very  few  foreign  or  Indian  mission- 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK     139 

aries.  It  is  not  reason  that  these  few  should  leave  the 
word  of  God  and  serve  tables.  They,  as  the  apostles, 
have  had  a  special  training  for  ministering  The  "Word, 
but  there  is  this  other  work  that  must  be  done.  It  must 
be  done  or  there  will  be  more  than  murmuring  in  the 
Indian  church.  Let  the  church  choose  out  from  among 
the  non-theologically  trained  disciples,  those  having  what 
was  called  for  in  the  Acts,  men  and  women  of  honest  re- 
port, full  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  wisdom,  educators,  doc- 
tors, engineers,  farmers,  nurses,  teachers  of  domestic 
science.  These  are  not  to  supplant  the  preacher,  they  are 
to  supplement  him,  to  make  his  work  more  effective  and 
far  reaching,  to  conserve  that  which  the  preacher  began. 
We  frequently  hear  it  stated  that  the  evangelizing  of  the 
whole  world  is  the  task  of  the  whole  church.  Yet  how 
little  provision  the  church  has  made  for  equipping  and 
sending  forth  any  but  the  theologically  trained.  If  we 
call  on  these  non-theologically  trained  we  are  widening 
the  scope  of  those  actively  engaged  in  winning  the  whole 
world.  And  if  we  really  believe  that  a  person  is  better 
off  with  Christ  than  without  Him,  we  will  do  our  utmost 
to  use  all  the  gifts  with  which  He  has  endowed  His  fol- 
lowers. The  Apostle  Paul,  I.  Cor.  12,  speaks  of  the 
diversity  of  gifts  of  believers,  but  the  same  Spirit  con- 
trolling and  directing  this  diversity,  so  that,  as  the  re- 
sult of  the  perfect  and  complete  working  of  the  various 
members,  we  get  a  harmony  as  complete  as  a  healthy 
body  where  every  organ  is  functioning  properly.  He 
sums  up  with  irrefutable  logic,  the  great  mystery  of 
our  faith,  "Now  ye  are  the  body  of  Christ  and  members 
in  particular.  And  God  hath  set  some  in  the  church, 
first  apostles,  secondarily  prophets,  thirdly  teachers, 
after  that  miracles,  then  gifts  of  healings,  helps,  govern- 


140  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

merits,  diversities  of  tongues. ' '  How  different  this  teach- 
ing of  Paul  from  some  of  our  modern  denominational 
papers.  God  hath  set  in  the  church,  apostles,  prophets, 
teachers,  preachers,  evangelists,  wonderworkers,  mission 
hospitals,  leper  asylums,  schools  and  colleges.  These 
belong  in  the  church,  are  part  of  its  God  appointed 
equipment  to  carry  out  the  greatest  task  in  the  world. 

I  am  frequently  asked  if  I  believe  the  church  will 
support  such  a  work  as  I  am  trying  to  do  in  India,  if  it 
will  not  have  to  be  separated  from  the  church  in  order 
to  grow  and  develop  properly?  I  answer  that  all  I 
have  done  has  been  done  at  the  express  command  of  duly 
constituted  church  authority,  that  the  church  at  large 
will  support  such  a  work  for  it  believes  that  God  hath 
set  in  the  church  such  things  as  we  are  trying  to  do  for 
His  glory. 

I  am  told  that  the  church  should  be  inspirational,  not 
institutional,  that  it  should  inspire  its  members  to  go 
and  do  outside  the  church  what  its  present  limitations 
make  inconvenient  to  be  done  inside.  I  believe  the 
church  should  be  both  inspirational  and  institutional, 
should  have  to-day  as  wide  a  program  as  Jesus  stated 
and  carried  out  and  as  the  Apostle  Paul  laid  down. 

There  are  a  few  fundamental  facts  that  it  is  well  to 
keep  in  mind  in  a  consideration  of  such  matters  as  have 
been  treated  of  in  this  book. 

I.  The  first  command  God  gave  to  man  regarding  the 
earth  is  "Replenish  the  earth,  and  subdue  it."  It  is  in 
following  out  this  command  of  God  to  subdue  the  earth, 
to  master  it  and  make  it  serve  mankind  that  man  has 
his  opportunity  to  develop  intellect,  mind  and  will. 
If  man  did  not  have  this  for  his  task,  if  he  were  like 
the  ravens,  what  would  he  be  now?  It  is  to  him  that 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK      141 

obeys  this  command  of  God,  to  him  that  overcometh  the 
secrets  of  the  natural  physical  world,  that  is  given  to 
eat  of  the  tree  of  life,  which  is  in  the  midst  of  the  para- 
dise of  God.  As  man  subdues  the  earth,  finds  out  about 
fire,  and  water,  about  soil  and  what  it  will  do,  learns  the 
chemical,  physical,  biological,  economic  and  spiritual 
laws,  which  He  who  laid  the  foundation  of  the  earth 
made  to  inhere  in  all  matter,  man  not  only  develops 
himself  but  with  every  new  conquest  of  the  laws  of  na- 
ture and  their  adaptation  and  appreciation,  he  helps  to 
free  human  life  of  its  drudgery  and  monotony.  We  can 
see  this  when  we  compare  modern  transport  facilities 
with  those  of  even  two  hundred  years  ago,  the  railroad, 
steamship,  motor  car,  airship,  compared  with  the  pack 
horse  and  stage  coach.  As  labor-saving  devices  are 
brought  in  the  tendency  in  labor  is  from  that  which  is 
less  pleasant  to  that  which  is  more  pleasant.  Less  hu- 
man physical  power  required,  more  mechanical  power 
and  man  controls  by  pulling  levers  or  pressing  buttons 
and  man  multiplies  his  physical  power  many  fold. 

II.  When  He  had  finished  His  creation,  "God  saw 
everything  that  He  had  made  and  behold  it  was  very 
good."  In  spite  of  much  we  see  about  us  God's  world 
is  a  good  world  as  He  created  it  and  it  is  the  part  of 
wisdom  for  men  in  general  to  acknowledge  this.  As  we 
look  over  this  world  and  note  its  constitution  and  order, 
we  notice  that  there  are  seasons,  alternating  periods  of 
rest,  of  rapid  growth,  of  harvest,  and  then  again  rest. 
As  we  think  into  things  we  must  be  struck  with  the  fact 
of  the  oft-recurring  and  continuing  things  of  life; 
hunger  and  sleep,  laughter  and  tears,  birth  and  growth, 
and  God  made  this  world  in  this  fashion  that  these 
things  should  be  so.  Therefore  a  great  majority  of  the 


142  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

men  and  women  on  this  earth  must  spend  their  time  in 
caring  for  the  oft-recurring  needs  of  men.  A  farmer 
cannot  plow  so  that  it  will  last  for  ten  years.  He  cannot 
sow  in  one  year  enough  wheat  to  last  for  a  decade.  The 
world  is  seldom  ahead  on  its  food  supply  more  than  three 
months.  There  are  these  daily  and  seasonal  tasks  that 
must  be  done  in  their  appointed  time.  Most  of  them  we 
call  "secular,"  and  there  is  in  some  theological  quarters 
a  tendency  to  look  down  upon  those  who  do  them  as  doing 
something  of  a  lower  order.  I  do  not  forget  that  once 
the  heavens  opened  and  the  voice  of  God  said  of  the 
village  carpenter  of  Nazareth,  "This  is  my  beloved  Son 
in  whom  I  am  well  pleased. ' '  Jesus  had  no  public  min- 
istry to  His  credit  at  that  time,  but  it  was  as  a  carpenter 
that  He  had  won  this  commendation  from  Him  who  rates 
all  things  at  their  true  worth.  Surely  unless  some 
farmer  had  saved  seed  and  prepared  his  ground,  sown 
the  seed  at  the  right  time,  cultivated  and  protected  the 
growing  crop,  harvested  and  stored  the  ripened  grain, 
which  the  miller  took  and  ground  and  the  baker  took  and 
baked  into  bread,  the  philosopher  would  not  have  his 
leisure  to  philosophize.  His  time  for  thought  and  study 
is  purchased  by  somebody  else's  foresight  and  timely, 
unremitting  toil.  So  everyone  who  is  doing  any  helpful 
work  in  the  world  and  doing  it  unto  God,  as  an  expres- 
sion of  his  faith  in  Him  who  doeth  all  things  well,  who 
does  it  in  faith  as  his  share  of  the  common  task  to  sustain 
and  maintain  human  life,  need  not  fear  in  that  day  when 
all  men  shall  be  judged  for  what  they  have  done.  God 
made  His  world  a  good  world,  a  world  that  gives  man  a 
chance  for  the  fullest  self-realization  as  he  diligently 
obeys  the  commands  of  God  with  reverent  spirit  and 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOR  SUCH  WORK     143 

hope  in  his  heart.     Blessed  is  he  who  does  the  common 
task  unto  God. 

III.  In  the  prayer  Jesus  taught  His  disciples  there  is 
one  petition  that  for  a  long  time  I  regarded  as  a  lower- 
ing of  the  standard.  On  each  side  of  it,  petitions  of 
highest  ethical  and  spiritual  aspiration,  what  an  appar- 
ent "come  down"  in  tone,  "Give  us  this  day  our  daily 
bread."  How  material  and  mundane  it  seems  at  first. 
Yet  let  us  try  to  leave  it  out  and  ignore  what  it  stands 
for,  and  see  how  much  we  lose.  Jesus  was  familiar  with 
farming  operations.  He  so  often  in  his  conversation 
drew  upon  His  agricultural  knowledge  for  illustration. 
So  here  again  He  talks  as  one  having  authority.  ' '  Give 
us,"  not  me,  alone,  but  us;  the  great,  wide  family  of 
mankind,  Jew  and  Gentile,  bond  and  free,  people  of 
every  color  and  tongue  under  heaven  and  all  men  every- 
where are  included  in  my  petition.  I  must  think  of 
them  when  I  pray.  I  cannot  be  indifferent  to  the  famine- 
cursed  anywhere  on  earth.  If  I  hear  of  hunger  and  need, 
if  I  really  pray  this  prayer  I  will  do  all  in  my  power  to 
answer  it,  and  help  the  hungry  everywhere.  "Our 
daily  bread."  We  depend  daily  upon  God  for  life.  We 
recognize  God  as  the  Giver  of  all  good ;  but  we  are  part- 
ners with  Him.  He  gave  the  soil,  the  life  in  the  seed, 
the  temperature,  the  rain,  the  sunshine,  the  increase: 
man  prepared  the  ground,  plowed,  and  harrowed  it, 
sowed  the  seed,  watched  and  protected  it  while  growing, 
reaped  and  stored  the  harvest  against  the  day  men 
needed  it.  If  God  had  failed  in  any  part  of  His  share, 
no  harvest.  Just  as  true,  if  man  fails  in  any  part  of 
his,  no  harvest.  We  are  therefore  co-workers  together 
with  God.  Man  is  likest  to  God  when  he  is  doing  things 


144  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

to  support  and  improve  human  life.  So  many  feel  that 
to  be  a  Christian  means  to  throw  aside  ordinary  foresight 
and  care,  that  somehow  or  other  God  will  provide,  that 
irresponsibility  is  the  right  attitude.  This  petition 
teaches  the  opposite.  The  bread  we  are  to  eat  two  years 
hence,  where  will  it  come  from?  At  this  very  time  men 
are  exercising  foresight  to  see  that  good  seed  is  being 
saved  in  sufficient  quantity,  stored  in  proper  places,  pro- 
tected against  damp  and  weevil.  They  are  plowing  the 
ground  and  getting  it  ready  for  the  seed.  They  will 
then  throw  away  perfectly  good  seed,  fit  to  eat,  into  the 
cold,  damp  ground,  to  run  the  risk  of  time  and  weather, 
and  insect  pest,  and  other  enemies,  there  to  die,  to  be 
lost  to  them,  in  order  that  there  may  be  a  harvest  to 
provide  seed  for  the  sower  and  bread  for  the  eater.  As 
Isaiah  says  in  this  connection,  "This  also  cometh  forth 
from  the  Lord  of  hosts,  which  is  wonderful  in  counsel 
and  excellent  in  working."  It  is  a  matter  of  historical 
record  that  those  individuals  and  those  nations  that  have 
prayed  ' '  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread, ' '  have  had  this 
prayer  more  fully  answered  than  those  that  have  not 
known  this  prayer.  There  is  that  about  the  Truth  that 
frees  men.  When  Jesus  said,  "The  Truth  shall  make 
you  free, ' '  He  was  thinking  in  no  narrow  sense  of  truth, 
as  being  only  spiritual  truth.  He  who  is  The  Truth,  The 
Way,  The  Life,  Himself  The  Author  of  all  truth,  is 
speaking  of  all  truth,  spiritual,  physical,  social,  political, 
economic,  in  fact,  any  truth  to  which  the  human  mind 
can  address  itself,  and  in  subduing  the  earth,  this  great 
body  of  truth  is  uncovered  for  the  blessing  of  men. 

After  Jesus  had  fed  the  multitude  there  remained 
ready  for  distribution  if  any  more  were  needed  twelve 
baskets  of  the  five  barley  loaves.  Jesus  bade  the  disciples 


JESUS'  EXAMPLE  FOE  SUCH  WORK     145 

gather  up  the  fragments  that  nothing  be  lost.  After  the 
years  in  India  the  greatest  abiding  impression  that  re- 
mains, is  the  one  of  "loss"  in  India.  Appalling  loss 
of  human  life,  and  stupendous  economic  waste.  Human 
life  is  so  abundant,  so  cheap,  so  easily  given  up  that  it 
is  depressing.  No  other  civilized  country  has  such  a 
high  infant  death  rate.  Preventable  disease  is  ever 
carrying  off  great  hosts  who  have  survived  infancy. 

A  man  can  be  hired  for  a  dollar  a  month.  A  woman 
or  girl  for  less.  A  cooly  will  carry  a  one  hundred  and 
sixty-pound  burden  eight  miles  up  a  mountain  side,  five 
thousand  feet  high,  for  thirty  cents.  Men  and  women 
everywhere  used  as  beasts  of  burden  but  not  so  well  fed 
or  housed  as  the  beasts.  The  great  loss  due  to  poverty 
and  illiteracy  is  beyond  power  to  compute.  India  has 
a  great  religious  sense,  it  has  a  great  work  to  do.  There 
are  great  isolated  landmarks  in  Indian  history  where 
an  Indian  had  a  fair  chance  and  where  he  has  made 
use  of  his  chance.  The  results  are  part  of  the  precious 
heritage  of  all  men  everywhere.  They  are  to  be  found 
in  the  various  fields  of  knowledge,  philosophy,  religion, 
literature  and  science.  They  have  enriched  the  world. 
India's  future  can  be  richer  than  India's  past.  I  am 
always  brooding  over  ways  and  means  of  avoiding  this 
fearful  waste  of  human  life,  of  transforming  it  into  a 
positive  asset  to  enrich  the  world.  Then  there  is  fear- 
ful economic  waste  due  to  ignorance  and  superstition. 
If  these  wastes  were  stopped  India  would  not  be  poor. 
The  present  wastes  are  the  potential  capital  which  should 
be  used  to  get  national  income,  the  means  with  which  to 
get  economic  independence.  As  Jesus  looks  over  India 
to-day  with  its  rich  soil,  and  teeming  multitudes  as  sheep 
without  a  shepherd,  so  surely  does  He  say  to  those  who 


146  THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  PLOW 

hear  His  voice,  gather  up  the  fragments  that  remain 
that  nothing  of  human  life  or  of  material  that  builds  up 
human  life  be  wasted,  but  rather  that  it  be  conserved  to 
help  to  bless  all  men  everywhere.  When  we  save  India 
from  these  incalculable  losses  we  are  helping  to  save  one- 
fifth  of  the  human  race.  A  task  great  enough,  and  worth 
while  enough  to  stretch  to  the  limit  the  best  America  has 
and  cause  us  to  pray  anew:  The  Harvest  truly  is  plen- 
teous, the  laborers  are  few.  Pray  ye  therefore  the  Lord 
of  the  Harvest  that  He — God  Almighty,  Himself — will 
send  forth  the  laborers,  men  and  women  willing  to  work 
out  His  will,  properly  equipped  with  all  labor-saving  de- 
vices, tractors,  plows,  harrows,  thrashing  machines,  that 
India  may  be  one  of  the  brightest  jewels  that  ennoble 
the  glorious  Crown  of  Him  who  once  wore  the  Crown 
of  Thorns. 


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